News & Analysis

May 1, 2014
HIM Briefings

Q: I work for a hospital with a geriatric psychiatry unit. Many patients are discharged to nursing homes.

May 1, 2014
Briefings on HIPAA

Watch out, HIPAA privacy and security officers. The criminals are coming, and they want to make money off of PHI your organization stores. It's one more thing to add to the growing list of compliance concerns covered entities (CE) and business associates (BA) have to worry about when protecting internal PHI.

May 1, 2014
Briefings on HIPAA

Not all good solutions work in healthcare. Take Code42's CrashPlan Pro®. CrashPlan Pro gets high marks when it comes to supporting software as a service (SaaS)?based secure continuous backup. On the other hand, Code42 is currently unwilling to update its business associate agreement (BAA) to address conflicts with HIPAA requirements.

May 1, 2014
Briefings on APCs

In January, I wrote about the perfect storm that led to the release of the 2014 OPPS final rule.

We endured a later-than-usual release, errors in the data files and a release of updated files, a government shutdown, and a vastly shortened window between the release of the final rule and implementation on January 1. Judging by the confusion among providers?and corrections and clarifications coming from CMS on what seems like a weekly basis on a wide range of issues?we're still not in the clear.

May 1, 2014
Briefings on APCs

When outpatient hospitals and physicians switch to ICD-10-CM diagnosis codes October 1, they will still continue to use CPT® codes to report procedures. But some facilities are planning to use the new procedure code set, ICD-10-PCS, as well.

May 1, 2014
Briefings on APCs

The ears--more formally, the auditory system--have their own chapter in ICD-10-CM, no longer relegated to the end of the neurology codes. Codes in Chapter 8, Diseases of the Ear and Mastoid Process (H60-H95), are located between the chapters for the optical system and the circulatory system.

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