Chasing down information on incomplete records can be overwhelming and a lost cause. What do you do when a medical record is incomplete 30 days after discharge (or 14 in California's case) and thus does not meet regulatory standards? Do you file it away without an answer to an open query or a signature from the practitioner? What if the responsible practitioner retired, expired, or is no longer practicing at your facility? Are you doing everything you can to get most deficiencies completed prior to the patient being discharged?
One task that almost every healthcare organization is going to have to tackle to comply with the HIPAA omnibus final rule is amending its Notice of Privacy Practices (NPP).
In a time when so much attention is focused on issues such as cyber security and the dangers posed from evolving technology, it's easy to forget the HIPAA basics, such as the need for workforce members not to gossip or chitchat about patients with other staff members or people in the community.
In January 2013, CMS introduced 42 therapy functional reporting G codes (nonpayable). These G codes are to be reported in conjunction with therapy services (physical, occupational, and speech). CMS also introduced seven complexity/severity modifiers to be used with these G codes.
Who would have thought that buying gas with a credit card or wearing a pacemaker could leave a person's information exposed? Yet highly sophisticated credit card skimming devices at gas stations are stealing from consumers, and healthcare organizations are concerned about the potential for malicious tampering or the theft of PHI from wireless medical devices such as pacemakers. Hidden vulnerabilities lie in everyday activities like these, and some of those vulnerabilities can expose PHI and put healthcare organizations at risk.
At 2:50 p.m. on Monday, April 15, two bombs went off at the finish line of the 117th annual Boston Marathon. Three people were killed, hundreds were injured, and local case managers needed to help deal with the crisis.
