Over 20% of commercially insured adults who underwent a common in-network surgical procedure between January 2012 and September 2017 received surprise charges for the episode from out-of-network clinicians, according to a recent study published in JAMA.
Q: I work for a pharmaceutical company. I am aware of the more obvious identifiers, but are patient diagnoses or ICD-10 codes (without any other identifiers such as dates of birth or Social Security numbers) considered PHI? I have heard arguments on both sides.
Q: If a patient receives less than 24 hours of observation care, do you still have to provide the patient with the MOON form? We often have surgical outpatients who will need observation for six to 12 hours for pain control, IV antibiotics, or other services. After treatment, we will discharge them home, but we need to put them on our surgical floor to provide this care and consequently have been putting them on observation status.
This week’s Medicare updates include a new NCA on artificial hearts and related devices, the advance notice for 2021 Medicare Advantage rates and policies, two memos for hospitals regarding coronavirus considerations, and more!
Providers need to clean up coding for electro-acupuncture devices, according to CMS. Claims submitted with HCPCS code L8679 will be subject to additional scrutiny to ensure they're correct.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent out a bulletin on February 3 to remind hospitals of information-sharing protocols when dealing with an outbreak of infectious disease or an emergency situation such as the novel coronavirus.
The American Thoracic Society and Infectious Diseases Society of America recently published guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of adults with community-acquired pneumonia. The updated guidelines are an attempt to better identify patients at risk for pneumonias due to multidrug-resistant bacteria such as Gram-negative rods and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
