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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.
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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.
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How many times have you carefully assessed a stroke patient in your ED to determine time of symptom onset, only to find out that this individual is not eligible to receive thrombolytics? New treatment options on the horizon will give you other potentially lifesaving interventions for these patients.
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Its more important than a comfortable waiting room with VCRs and fish tanks, or even an attentive triage nurse. In fact, its often the single most important factor impacting patient satisfaction: door-to-doctor times.
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Is your ED practicing according to current guidelines for trauma patients? Do you need images for use during trauma inservices? The www.trauma.org web site has become an invaluable resource for many emergency nurses.
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EDs are not adhering to recommended guidelines when caring for patients with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), according to this study from Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, CT.
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Emerging data in elderly patients indicate that a stealth epidemic of hepatitis C and hepatitis B virus may be going undetected in ambulatory care settings, Hospital Infection Control has learned. If the data are verified, the infectious risk extends to all patients in ambulatory care, as elderly patients are essentially a surrogate marker for health care transmission due to their lack of other risk factors.
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A recent article by investigators at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reiterated the following basic infection control measures to prevent patient-to-patient transmission of bloodborne pathogens in ambulatory care settings.
