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Half of all graduating medical residents or fellows trained in Illinois leave the state to practice medicine elsewhere, in large part due to the medical liability environment in Illinois, according to a new study from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. The study warns Illinois will face a critical physician shortage especially in rural areas if new strategies aren't adopted to stem the exodus.
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In 2009, Jose Gonzalez, MD, the medical director for the Texas Medicaid/State Children's Health Insurance Program, discovered the devastating results of a medical error in a very personal way. When his niece, Kaelyn Sosa, then 18 months old, was brought into a Miami hospital after receiving a bump on her head from a fall, she was sedated and given an MRI. During the test, her breathing tube became dislodged, resulting in a severe brain injury.
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New 2010 Amendments to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act ("Dodd-Frank Act") make clear that prosecutors and regulators expect to see an effective compliance program that protects whistleblowers, including risk managers, says Reid Bowman, JD, general counsel with ELT Inc., a San Francisco company that provides compliance and ethics training.
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Here is a payment plan matrix for self-pay patients used by patient access staff at Skaggs Regional Medical Center in Branson, MO.
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Here is a payment planÿ
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If registrars are more accurate when completing registrations, fewer claims denials will result. This clearly improves your hospital's fiscal situation, but remains a daunting challenge for many patient access departments. Here are some steps taken by the patient access department at St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center in Syracuse, NY:
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Carmen Arroyo, clinic operations manager of cardiology, nephrology, and pulmonary medicine at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC, set a goal to increase her area's time-of-service collections by 9% over the previous fiscal year. She wound up tripling the amount collected. Here is how she did it:
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Point-of-service collections are becoming increasingly important for patient access areas for many reasons, but this revenue doesn't come easily.
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Registration accuracy is always a foremost concern for patient access leaders, as problems in this area can lead to needless claims denials; ineffective quality assurance audits, however, won't get results, says Diane E. Mastalski, CHAA, CHAM, Virtua's corporate director of patient access.
