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Patient access staff often overlook or misinterpret payer requirements, which can cost the hospital thousands of dollars. Yet keeping staff current with all the various rules is a full-time job in itself.
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Improving morale of patient access staff is difficult, but it doesn't have to be expensive.
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Patient transfer admissions pose a "bittersweet" issue for patient access managers, says Terry D. Long, RN, BSN, MBA, NEA-BC, director of the patient transfer center at Texas Health Resources in Arlington.
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A health care organization might have in place the best information technology (IT) protections available, but complacency can be a dangerous thing considering the gold mine of personal information stored by a hospital.
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The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued new guidance for providers on talking about patients' health information with and in the presence of other parties — with an emphasis on what can be discussed.
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Despite increasing demand for privacy surrounding health information, North American hospitals lag behind European counterparts when it comes to one of the most visible impediments to privacy — multi-bed hospital rooms.
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Recently, a patient at Northwest Medical Center in Tucson, AZ, was diagnosed with measles and ordered into isolation by her physician, but remained unisolated in the ED for more than 12 hours.
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[Editor's note: This column addresses readers' questions about the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). If you have a question you'd like answered, contact Steve Lewis, Editor, ED Management, Atlanta. Phone: (770) 442-9805. Fax: (770) 664-8557. E-mail:
[email protected].]
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A man with chest pain tells your ED physician that he uses cocaine and is HIV-positive, then asks the physician not to tell his girlfriend who is about to enter the room.
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ED physicians should not disclose a patient's HIV status, except when there is a legal mandate to do so and even in this case, this is preferably done through a third party, such as a public health official, advises Matthew Rice, MD, JD, FACEP, an ED physician with Northwest Emergency Physicians of TEAMHealth in Federal Way, WA.
