Pagosa Springs Medical Center (PSMC) in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, has agreed to pay $111,400 to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and to adopt a substantial corrective action plan in a settlement over alleged HIPAA violations.
Baylor Scott & White Medical Center-Frisco, in Frisco, Texas, announced a data breach earlier this month affecting 47,000 patients and guarantors. The breach occurred in September when the hospital found an issue with a third-party vendor’s credit card processing system.
Q: Sometimes the emergency department where I work gets so busy we have to evaluate patients before they can be placed in a room. I have seen nurses perform examinations on patients on stretchers in hallways where they can easily be overheard discussing medical histories and treatment options. Would this be considered a HIPAA violation?
Hospitals are allowed to publish a list of charges that contains UB-04 revenue codes when complying with 2019 IPPS final rule requirements requiring the publication of standard charges, the American Hospital Association (AHA) said in a regulatory advisory bulletin
Q: I’m working with our contracting staff to negotiate with a new payer. Is there any potentially problematic contract language I should take under further review?
Findings from a retrospective analysis of inpatient data recently published in Critical Care Medicine show that average hospital costs and mortality rates are significantly higher for patients diagnosed with sepsis after hospital admission when compared with patients diagnosed prior to admission.
Q: Can an ICD-10-CM body mass index (BMI) code be used as a standalone code? If not, what documentation should we look for to justify the use of a BMI code?
