The amount of reimbursement hospitals receive will be tied to physicians' ability to communicate with patients, manage their pain, and explain medications, as a result of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS)'s Hospital Value-based Purchasing Program, which will affect Medicare reimbursements as of October 2012, notes Marshall H. Chin, MD, MPH, Richard Parrillo Family Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago.
Many pediatricians feel some distress over parents who refuse to vaccinate their children, says Douglas S. Diekema, MD, MPH, attending physician and director of education at the Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics at Seattle (WA) Children's Hospital and professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, also in Seattle.
Until recently, members of the patient access staff at St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center in Syracuse, NY, were assigned a generic "customer service representative" title that didn't reflect what they actually did.
Many patients are accustomed to receiving text messages from friends, retailers, and workplaces, and they probably expect to be able to receive texts from you.
Because the findings were unclear on an abdominal and pelvic sonogram performed for a patient at Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, TX, the radiologist performed a CT scan of the abdomen and pelvis with contrast, but this additional test hadn't been authorized by the payer.
Not long ago, a registrar would assume a patient was providing accurate information, only to find out the claim was denied due to incorrect insurance, reports Michelle M. Mohrbach, CHAM, manager of patient access and central scheduling at Blanchard Valley Health System in Findlay, OH.
A patient wasn't happy with the answer she received after asking registrars at Botsford Hospital in Farmington Hills, MI, the cost of a high-dollar procedure, and she insisted that she could get it performed for half of the price quoted.
Will my insurance cover this visit?" is something patients often ask registrars in the emergency department at Sutter Delta Medical Center in Antioch, CA. However, the answer isn't as simple as it seems.
Retained objects are a constant worry in any invasive procedure, but the risk has gone overlooked in obstetrics. A project from the Minnesota Health Association (MHA) is changing that situation and has practically eliminated the problem statewide.
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) recently released its Work Plan for the fiscal year 2013, giving risk managers a heads-up about what topics will be of most interest to regulators over the next year. Some are perennial favorites, such as fraud and abuse, but there are many new areas of focus for 2013.
