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Reprocessing medical devices labeled for single use offers substantial savings, but the practice has been controversial since it first started gaining popularity more than 10 years ago.
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Risk managers may be shocked to realize how much of their disaster plan relies on other entities beyond their control, says William Spratt, JD, a partner with the law firm of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart in Miami.
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The New Orleans experience should make risk managers aware that disasters rarely unfold the way you expected them to in all those planning sessions. If your plan for a major fire at your hospital involves moving patients to another facility down the street, what if that facility is out of action too? If your plan calls for evacuating patients to another city, what if all the roads are closed?
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Risk managers will reap lessons from the experience of health care providers in the Gulf Coast for years to come, but one of the most apparent lessons from Hurricane Katrina should send you rushing to reassess your organization's disaster plans. What looks good on paper may not work at all in the midst of a major crisis in your community, some hospitals learned, and failing to plan adequately could set your organization up for tremendous liability in the aftermath of a disaster.
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The exclusive 2005 Healthcare Risk Management Salary Survey was sent to 1,173 readers in the July 2005 issue. A total of 161 were returned, for a response rate of 14%. The results were tabulated and analyzed by American Health Consultants, publisher of HRM.
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Increased salary levels may indicate that risk managers finally are being paid more after years of taking on additional duties, according to the results of this year's Healthcare Risk Management Salary Survey.
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The Department of Health and Human Services published in the Sept. 23 Federal Register a proposal for adoption of standards for certain attachments to electronic health care claims under HIPAA. The proposed standard would require doctors, hospitals, and other covered entities to use certain transactions, messaging standards, and a new code set when they electronically request the additional information and provide the information in response to the request related to health plans processing claims.
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Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator Mark McClellan said the federal government will not process incoming non-HIPAA-compliant Medicare claims submitted for payment on and after Oct. 1, 2005. That decision ended a portion of CMS' HIPAA contingency plan that was in effect since October 2003, under which Medicare continued accepting noncompliant claims after the deadline.
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News: A young female patient was burned and suffered nerve damage after trichloroacetic acid was improperly used instead of acetic acid during her colposcopy. She sued for damages and was awarded $500,000 for pain and suffering.
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For any claims arising after an evacuation or disaster involving your organization, the key issue may be whether you prepared as well as you should have and then executed your plan effectively. To determine that, experts say courts may rely on the Emergency Preparedness, Response and Recovery Checklist: Beyond the Emergency Management Plan" issued in December 2004 by the American Health Lawyers Association (AHLA) in Washington, DC.
