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All Posts In The COVID19 Category

Telehealth and Its Impact on Healthcare Delivery

Technology has influenced many facets of life, and healthcare is not an exemption. Over the last few years, several digital healthcare startups have sprung up, and this has simplified the process of healthcare delivery to remote places and people who find it difficult to commute.   Modern life has undergone tremendous transformation because of the internet and progressive software. This useful tool has changed the way we communicate and keep in touch with family and friends, how we consummate financial transactions, and how goods and services are negotiated and purchased.   There are so many telehealth tools that you can choose from if you are keen on receiving quality healthcare

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HIPAA and Professional Sports Figures: Let’s Get the Record Straight: Melissa’s Mention

Matt Fisher clears up some confusion related to HIPAA and individuals on Health IT Answers. “The spotlight continues to shine brightly on HIPAA, especially as an excuse, when it comes to professional athletes responding to questions around COVID vaccine status. The most recent string of erroneous responses started strongly over the summer when NFL training camps kicked into gear. As players returned and the league indicated its intentions for health safety, questions were often posed to players to find where they all stood. Before diving into a bit from my perspective, I encourage readers to check out a similar article by Charles Curtis on ForTheWin with USA Today where I

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Telemedicine and Coding for Remote Blood Pressure Monitoring

Telemedicine has grown rapidly because it allows the remote delivery of healthcare services during the pandemic. Telemedicine tends to lower healthcare costs, expand the patient database, and offer flexible working conditions for physicians and health care providers. It reduces physical office hours and saves overhead costs, like payroll for hourly employees, utilities, and other various expenses associated with an office being open. Remote Patient Monitoring is a key component of Telemedicine. It allows the physician and the patient’s care team to get real-time data thereby enabling communication without an in-person appointment. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS) introduced new Current Procedural Terminology codes for Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM)

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COVID-19 and the Family Practice Provider

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the economic system has certainly been negatively affected. As covid-19 continues its exponential growth across the world, it has taken a financial hit on all businesses, including the health care systems. The Coronavirus outbreak affects Schools, Universities, Cinemas, Concert halls, Theaters, Pubs, Restaurant, Shopping malls and other small businesses. Many People have lost their jobs and shops have closed down as a result of this pandemic. Many people find themselves in isolation with their family or being completely alone. Many People are lonely, afraid and depressed. This novel Coronavirus has been a source of catastrophic social and economic crisis. People now make use

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Telemedicine Since the Coronavirus Pandemic

Since the outbreak of Coronavirus, the health care system has had to rethink how to deliver care and one of the most remarkable ways to care for people’s health is with the use of telemedicine. Telemedicine is known as the remote delivery of healthcare services. Telemedicine has been in existence for years now but, it is historically only used to reach patients in remote areas. However, with the rapid changes in technology in the last decades, telemedicine has transformed into complex integrated services used in hospitals, private physician offices, homes, and other healthcare facilities. Telemedicine was originally developed by health professionals as a way to treat patients living in rural

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ICD Code Classifications for COVID-19

At the time I am writing this article, the U.S. has confirmed over 4.2 million cases of COVID-19 and 144,000 deaths nationwide, and as the threat of Coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to seemingly increase daily, The World Health Organization had to develop codes for classification of Covid-19 cases.   The World Health Organization Family of International Classifications (WHOFIC) Network Classification and Statistics Advisory Committee (CSAC) had an emergency meeting on 31st of January 2020 to discuss the creation of a specific code for the new coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19).   World Health Organization (WHO) has established a new International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) emergency code (U07.1, 2019-nCov acute respiratory disease). The virus

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Tips for Recouping Lost Revenue From COVID-19 Pandemic

Craig Adkins of AdvancedMD gives HealthIT Answers some tips of how to recoup some of the revenue lost during the pandemic in this article mention. “The past few months of the pandemic have brought many challenges to physician practices, especially small, independent providers operating outside the domains of COVID-19 treatment. While mandatory shutdowns and quarantines have slowed the spread of the virus, the economic impact has been substantial. Fewer outpatient visits—and even fewer procedures—over the past several months have led to serious financial hardship for many providers. Practices that will stay afloat during this challenging time are doing so strategically. In some cases, practices planned for a “rainy day” and

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Recent Implementation of a New Set of COVID-19 Dataset Codes

Information from EHR Intelligence… “There will now be over 150 new LOINC dataset codes that are linked to COVID-19. Health IT professionals at Regenstrief Institute have added new COVID-19 standardized codes for laboratory testing and clinical observations to the Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC) dataset. LOINC aims to streamline health data standardization for more efficient EHR use and health data exchange, which is key when a pandemic such as COVID-19 occurs. As one of the most widely-used code systems, LOINC seeks to provide standardization in medical test result identification, observations, and a variety of other clinical measures. LOINC promotes interoperability with new terms for tests and clinical observations

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How Do We Improve Data Collection and Exchange Following COVID-19?

How Do We Improve Data Collection and Exchange Following COVID-19? Christopher Jason answers this question in an article at EHR Intelligence.   Reducing measurement burden, addressing the lag in reporting data quality, and improving data standardization will be key to boosting clinical quality measurement, according to a recent journal article published in JAMA Network. “There is a lack of information that would help clinicians improve care delivery in the moment and learn for the future,” J. Matthew Austin, PhD, and Allen Kachalia, MD, wrote in the article. “This situation highlights how the current approach to quality and safety measurement remains too labor intensive, contains significant data lags, and lacks sufficient

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Is the COVID-19 Pandemic Unraveling HIPAA Rules?

Art Gross poses a great question over at Health IT Answers… Is COVID-19 unraveling HIPPA?   “The Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA) was created in 1996 to protect patients and their privacy, and if you are in healthcare, you already know this and are familiar with what it means. With a goal to ensure that people could maintain health insurance between jobs, thus the “Portability” part of the name; along with a second, and critical goal, to address the “Accountability” of insurance to protect the confidentiality part of patient information and data. This meant mandating standards of privacy for electrotonic protected health information (PHI) and data that was

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