-
Question: If an employee works out of his or her home, either full-time or part-time (e.g. during maternity leave, on weekends or evenings, or as part of telecommuting job description), do the HIPAA security regulations apply? If so, how do we ensure compliance?
-
The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) has reported that the $150 Medicare payment for intraocular lenses (IOLs) is more than the cost of IOLs to surgery centers. OIG recommends that the Medicare payment be reduced in a manner that consider the different types and costs of IOLs.
-
Since 1996, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has received reports of more than 110 adverse events related to absorbable hemostatic agents, including 11 that resulted in paralysis or other neural deficits.
-
From an IRB members perspective, these are trying times. On the one hand, investigators complain that regulations for human subjects research and IRBs are too stringent, making it difficult for them to do their studies. Alternatively, human subjects advocates continually complain that IRBs and institutions are too lax in monitoring clinical studies.
-
Old habits are hard to break, and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations is asking same-day surgery staff members to break some habits theyve had since nursing and medical school. National Patient Safety Goal No. 2 requires health care organizations to standardize abbreviations, acronyms, and symbols and to develop a list of do-not-use abbreviations.
-
Reports of adverse events, including the death of a cosmetic surgery patient, after administration of propofol by RNs have resulted in a change in anesthesia standards for some organizations accredited by the Gurnee, IL-based American Association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities (AAAASF).
-
A third option to the Periodic Performance Review (PPR) has been approved by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. Earlier this year, Joint Commission created two options to the self-conducted midcycle review for organizations that may be concerned about the discoverability of PPR information shared with the Joint Commission.
-
Encouragement from the Bush administration for hospitals to give discounts to uninsured patients and financially needy Medicare beneficiaries will have little impact, say some access professionals surveyed by Hospital Access Management, mostly because hospitals already give such discounts under the name of charity care and uncollectible bad debt.
-
In response to suggestions that two laws enforced by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) may prevent hospitals from offering discounted prices to uninsured patients. The OIG discusses each law on its web site, www.oig.hhs.gov, as follows.
-
As part of the financial aid program at the New Orleans-based Touro Infirmary, there is a clinic for uninsured or underinsured patients, says Beth Keith, CHAM, director of patient business services.
