-
On July 15, 2008, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) entered into an agreement with Seattle-based Providence Health & Services to settle potential violations of HIPAA privacy rules.
-
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) may have given rise to — and oversees — HIPAA privacy regulations, but according to a report by the General Accounting Office (GAO), the agency's approach to ensuring the privacy of health information still needs some work.
-
Instead of asking a patient to show you a driver's license, how about identifying patients by the unique vein patterns in their hands? A new palm scanning device is used by patient access staff at Carolinas HealthCare System, the first health care provider in the United States to implement this technology.
-
If you are being inundated with sales pitches from technology vendors these days, it's not too surprising. A number of solutions are aimed at improving patient access processes, such as compliance with new admission/registration requirements.
-
-
The Joint Commission and the Urgent Care Association of America (UCAOA) have formed a partnership to provide quality oversight for urgent care clinics.
-
The Joint Commission has released a statement that effective Jan. 1, 2009, there will be new simplified scoring and decision processes for all accreditation and certification programs that "better reflect an organization's performance regarding compliance with Joint Commission standards and elements of performance [EPs]."
-
One way to get your staff flu vaccination rates higher is to make it as easy as possible for them to obtain a vaccination, says David Ross, DO, an emergency physician at Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, CO. Ross says his hospital's staff vaccination rate has risen from 63% to 73% in the past year.
-
If you want to give patients gift cards as a way to say "sorry" for that long wait in the ED or anything else that left them unhappy feel free. The government says you're not violating any prohibitions on improper remuneration.
-
What should be done if the ED patient disagrees with what is documented or perceives that the record is incomplete?