Hospital Access Management – August 1, 2004
August 1, 2004
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Team approach produces dramatic reduction in denials
As the newly hired patient financial services director at St. Helena Hospital in Deer Park, CA, Kim Meredith was ready to put her focus on reducing the institutions denial rate. -
OTC collections boosted with ‘enthusiasm of sports’
When Peggy ONeill, admitting director for St. Helena Hospital in Deer Park, CA, began tackling the improvements involved in a major restructuring of the admitting department, she looked first at the bottom line. -
Lawsuits unwarranted, says hospital industry
About 18 not-for-profit hospitals in 15 states have been hit with class-action lawsuits filed in federal courts challenging their tax-exempt status as charity institutions. -
Customer service exercises add spice to staff meetings
When the patient access department at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center-Presbyterian in Philadelphia has its monthly staff meeting these days, theres an added attraction. After the insurance updates, schedule changes, and other pertinent matters are handled, attendees are asked to participate in an interactive customer service initiative. -
ED volunteers help with patient communication
The third stage of an ambitious campaign aimed at streamlining emergency department operations gets under way this month as Baptist Memorial Health Care in Memphis, TN, begins recruiting members for a new ED volunteer corps. Whats unusual about this hospital volunteer initiative is that it is targeted to young people who may be considering jobs in the health care field. -
News brief: 82 million Americans uninsured in 2002-2003
Nearly 82 million Americans younger than 65 went without health insurance for all or part of 2002 and 2003, according to a report released recently by Families USA. -
HIPAA Regulatory Alert: Many health care organizations still remain a long way from security compliance
Even though less than a year remains before the HIPAA security rule takes effect April 21, 2005, many health care organizations are a long way from compliance, according to an assessment by Washington, DC-based URAC. -
HIPAA Regulatory Alert: OCR reports more than 5,000 complaints
As of April 2004, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights (OCR) had received more than 5,000 complaints from individuals about alleged HIPAA privacy violations. -
HIPAA Regulatory Alert: Working Group concerned about claims rejections
The HIPAA Implementation Working Group, a coalition formed to help providers and vendors better understand the process by which the HIPAA electronic standards are developed and modified and to increase provider and vendor representation in that process, has contacted Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator Mark McClellan to express concern over a CMS instruction to fiscal intermediaries to reject claims lacking certain data elements not needed by Medicare for claims adjudication. -
HIPAA Regulatory Alert: Vendors agree on HIPAA interpretation 43% of time
The HIPAA Conformance Certification Organization says its Common Compliance Assessment Process determined that, on average, the nations leading HIPAA translation and validation vendors agree in their interpretation of compliance 43% of the time, up from an average of 35% on all transactions in 2003.