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If one of your registrars was offered a little more money or better hours by another area of the hospital, would he or she find your patient access department impossible to leave?
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With all the talk about encryption and other high-tech ways to safeguard protected health information (PHI), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) violations still can be traced to the simplest task: jotting down notes about a patient on a piece of paper.
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Payments made online have doubled over the past two years at Cincinnati (OH) Children’s Hospital Medical Center, reports Christopher Lah, senior director of revenue cycle customer service.
“About 15.5% of total dollars collected went through the portal,” says Lah. “The portal is starting to have a significant impact on both our copay collections and other out-of-pocket expenses.” With 27,919 online payments made in 2014, $5.3 million was collected, with an average of $193 paid per transaction.
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More patients have access to insurance coverage today, but they also have higher out-of-pocket responsibility.
“Our greatest challenge is getting the information we need to verify healthcare benefits and coverage for their stay,” says Susan Kole, director of patient access at Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, CT.
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The expansion of hospitalist programs at medical centers nationwide has yielded impressive benefits in terms of reduced costs of care and lowered length of stays, according to recent published studies.
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Though the number of programs to improve care for patients at the end of life have increased, little real progress has been made, claims a new report from Washington, DC-based Last Acts, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-sponsored coalition to improve care for the dying.
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The term hospitalist can mean a variety of things.
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In November, Oregon voters were asked to consider a once unthinkable measure: abolish private health insurance in favor of a taxpayer-funded, single-payer health system that would cover everyone.
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The federal investigation into alleged billing fraud and unnecessary surgeries at a Redding, CA, hospital also has shed new light on potential abuses of a unusual Medicare reimbursement mechanism designed to help hospitals who perform difficult procedures or care for very sick patients.
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Once a final decision is made regarding some proposed research involving very young children and an older smallpox vaccine, there could be long-term repercussions for IRBs nationwide.
