CMS is reexamining inpatient criteria because it has seen a significant increase in the number of patients spending more than 24 hours in observation. Providers are worried that a Recovery Auditor will deny a short inpatient stay for lack of medical necessity and recoup payment years later. So instead, some facilities place patients in observation for longer time periods.
If many acute care hospitals struggle to protect patient privacy, long-term care organizations face their own challenges in ensuring the privacy of residents who live in their nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
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.
