Qualifying for EHR meaningful use incentive dollars is no easy feat. A provider needs to be an eligible professional or hospital under the Medicare or Medicaid programs, with the latter also dependent on whether the provider’s state participates in the program. The EHR technologies the provider uses must be certified, and the provider must use those technologies appropriately for at least 90 days and attest to all of the above.
As I work with various clients who are preparing for transition to EHRs, I often hear HIM staff voice concerns that they haven’t been invited to the table for discussions regarding EHR strategy. In some cases, the selection of an entire system has been made for the facility with literally no input from the HIM department!
It comes up every other day now, it seems. It’s the question with no good answer; you’re sure of it. But your staff members really want to know: Why can’t they eat at their desks?
RACs are looking at excisional debridement coding, and it’s no wonder. There are plenty of potential traps for coders reporting these inpatient procedures.
Where is the healthcare community at in terms of EHR implementation, and where is it going from here? And what effect, if any, has the EHR meaningful use incentive program had on implementation efforts? MRB asked these and other questions in our July 2010 benchmarking survey on EHRs—and HIM professionals from 325 hospitals and facilities answered.
One of the most important aspects of documenting your evaluation and treatment of inpatients in the medical record is providing the verbiage that meets your goals for describing your patient. When you provide the right words, the coders assign the right codes.
The electronic Program for Evaluating Payment Patterns Electronic Report (PEPPER) contains data for hospitals on MS-DRGs and discharges at high risk for payment errors. Per the opening paragraph of the 2010 PEPPER User’s Guide:
As part of a compliance program, a hospital should conduct regular audits to ensure charges for Medicare services are correctly documented and billed. PEPPER can help guide the hospital’s auditing and monitoring activities.
ARRA brought us an expanded version of HIPAA. Along with it came the clear message that if the last time you visited your HIPAA policies and procedures was April 15, 2005, you have a problem.
