HIM Briefings

Most soon-to-be HIM professionals fresh out of college want nothing more than to know what's going on inside the HIM director or manager's head. After all, it would help to know what a potential interviewer is thinking when you pop into that chair for your first interview for a potential HIM job, wouldn't it?

In the last quarterly TJC update, we reviewed the Information Management chapter's standards that were identified with the new risk icon (R).

Also known as the "mega rules," the omnibus final rules are clarifications and finalizations of the HIPAA rules of 2003, the HITECH rules of 2008, and the incorporation of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) rules into the Privacy and ­Security rules. These are not sweeping changes, as many ­describe, but clarifications. In most cases, what are now final rules are best practices that organizations should already be following.

CMS released a number of proposed changes to the outpatient prospective payment system (OPPS) July 8. The 2014 OPPS proposed rule (available at http://tinyurl.com/oyu33jx) is shorter than normal at 718 pages, but the ­proposed changes are significant and probably the most sweeping since the inception of OPPS, says Jugna Shah, MPH, president and founder of Nimitt Consulting in Washington, D.C.

HIM directors can always do more to gear up for the super transition into ICD-10 next year. In fact, one way you can begin preparing is to pinpoint specific elements in ICD-9 that already exist in the record and will be documentation and coding musts once the new code set arrives.

Managing coders is challenging enough when you work with them face to face. Manage them when they are off-site, though, and you've got a whole new set of challenges. You may rarely have the chance to shake their hand, see them smile, or read their body language in meetings. Are they productive? Are they happy? If you can't reach them, do you know what's going on?

As an HIM director, you are responsible for the ­integrity of your patients' records-even when your hospital shuts down certain wings of the facility or closes its doors entirely.

We've been on quite a ride since the start of the ­Recovery Auditor (RA) demonstration project.