HIM Briefings

It has been a long time since The Joint Commission has published frequently asked questions (FAQ), which serve as a great resource for clarification of standards and elements of performance. Generally, FAQs originate with questions from the field that continue to be asked over time.

Q: I realize that you cannot compel your staff to complete Occupational Safety and Health Administration training online on their own time. However, I am wondering whether the same applies for HIPAA training. Must this training be conducted during work hours, or can we provide workforce members with a deadline by which to complete training on their own time?

CMS' Conditions of Participation for UR include specific requirements for the composition of the UR committee, specifying that it must be composed of at least two doctors of medicine or osteopathy.

Last month, we laid the foundation to promote successful engagement of the coding and clinical documentation improvement teams in PSI 90 performance improvement efforts.

It's been two years since the American Health Information Management Association joined ACDIS to offer the industry physician query instructions in Guidelines for Achieving a Compliant Query Practice, published in February 2013.

Incentives posed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's Triple Aim Initiative and value-based purchasing emphasize treating the whole person to include preventive, medical, dental, postacute, community, mental health, and addiction services.

Conducting pre-billing audits can be challenging, but when done correctly, it can save organizations from spending time recoding and rebilling claims that payers deny. These audits can be conducted on the front end, in both inpatient and outpatient settings, once records have been coded.

Q: You are reviewing a computer-generated insurance claim before it is sent to the insurance carrier, and you happen to notice the patient's name on the claim?it's an old friend of yours. You quickly read the code for the diagnosis. Is this a breach of confidentiality?