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Not only do the verification and quality services personnel at North Carolina Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem perform one of the most thorough registration quality checks around, theyve been doing it for 12 years.
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Tara Tinsley, CHAM, access supervisor and department trainer in the emergency department at Childrens Health Center in Birmingham, AL, shares her experience with Hospital Access Management in response to a request for information on ED cash collection practices in the May 2003 issue by Lori Judge, MS, HAS, director of patient financial services at St. Claire Regional Medical Center in Morehead, KY.
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Its been clear for a while that patient access managers could increase their marketability by beefing up their business office and patient accounting experience. But the very latest trend appears to be toward hiring a triple threat someone who also has a background in medical records.
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At the Seventh HIPAA Summit held in Baltimore in mid-September, Dr. HIPAA former Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services executive William Braithwaite said that while Transactions and Code Sets testing should have started in April at the latest, vendors should have provided software to all their clients and completed testing, clearinghouses should have finished testing for all customers, and health plans should have finished testing all transactions with providers and clearinghouses, the reality was that much of the testing still was being done and some entities hadnt yet started.
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With surveys indicating that the required Oct. 16 compliance with transaction and code sets HIPAA requirements would be spotty at best, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has drawn industry support for deciding to implement its contingency plan and accept legacy claims for an undetermined period of time while efforts toward full compliance continue.
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The summer 2003 Industry HIPAA survey conducted by HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) and Phoenix Health Systems found that not enough time was seen as the major roadblock to meeting the Oct. 16 implementation deadline for transactions and code sets. And that report helped set the stage for CMS and others to apply their contingency plans and continue to accept noncompliant claims.
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In testimony before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, the president of the American Clinical Laboratory Association said that although labs are committed to compliance with the transaction standards, the Department of Health and Human Services needs to provide more specific guidance to assist providers struggling with implementation and also must streamline the mechanisms for development and maintenance of the transaction standards.
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Making your EDs waiting area more child-friendly can have a tremendous impact on patient satisfaction, make your department more of a draw for children and their parents, and even ease staffs stress when caring for the youngest patients, according to ED managers who have remodeled with children in mind.
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The same strategies that landed the emergency department at Albany (NY) Medical Center in the top 5% for overall acute care of patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS) in a national study can be used successfully in any ED, says an Albany ED physician. But be forewarned: Some interdepartmental diplomacy is key.
