Medical Billing Blog with Medical Billing & Coding Info & Articles
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Welcome to the medical billing blog containing news and articles relating to medical billing, medical coding ICD-10, HIPAA and all practice management functions.
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Currently contains over 1,235 healthcare and medical related entries.
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EHR Training and Experience Lead to Decreased EHR Use by Residents
Are you satisfied with your EHR? Do you spend 40% of your day in your EHR? Research shows that some physicians do.. “Physicians at large community hospitals spend nearly four hours during work hours, or roughly 40 percent of their day, on the EHR, according to a study published in the Public Library of Science (PLOS ONE). Additionally, researchers found a significant decrease in resident EHR use with increased training and experience, although the overall amount of time spent on the EHR remained high. “Studies exploring EHR use emphasized extensive time as one of the significant drawbacks to EHR,” wrote the study authors. “It has been reported that physicians …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Poor Payer Reimbursements are Effecting Practices During COVID-19
HealthIT Answers posted an interesting article on how the pandemic is effecting providers. “Most physicians who have been practicing for a few decades remember the days when private payer reimbursements dwarfed Medicare reimbursements. That dynamic has long since flipped, starting with the 2008 recession. Reimbursements have been flat or have lost value from inflation, while practice costs have seen double-digit increases. Meanwhile, hospitals and insurance-owned health networks have seen reimbursements increase to 300% or more of Medicare in some cases, whereas it’s not uncommon for private practices to receive rates far below Medicare standards. Many practices have seen their volumes decrease from 30% to up to 90%, and a significant …
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