Two managed care plans owned by AmeriHealth Mercy Family of Companies and affiliated with Pennsylvania Medicaid acknowledged to a reporter on October 21 that a flash drive storing 280,000 patient records had gone missing on September 20. The cost of complying with HIPAA victim notification requirements and offering credit monitoring services is estimated in the millions.
Conference announcement/call for abstracts and award nominations The Omaha System International Conference: A Key to Practice, Documentation, and Information Management will be held in Eagan, MN from April 7-9, 2011. It is presented by Martin Associates and the host school is San Jose State University School of Nursing. Poster abstracts/awards nominations are due January 31, 2011. […]
Northwood Homecare began using the CellTrak cellular point-of-care documentation system in the fall of 2009. Over the course of that year, the Halifax, Nova Scotia home care provider has been able to eliminate paper reports, inaccuracies and forgotten tasks at the point of care.
Have you spoken with your software vendor yet about their plans for the HIPAA 5010 claims transaction sets? Testing begins in January, with implementation one year later. After that, CMS claims, ICD-10 will arrive on time in 2013, and it will be obligatory for all HIPAA covered entities, not just those that submit claims to Medicare and Medicaid.
Another insurance company has been convinced that remote patient monitoring systems can reduce hospital recidivism and lower overall patient costs. 270 Humana workers will monitor 60,000 plan members.
There are about 1,000 hip fractures every day in the United States, over 90% of which are caused by falls. Fatal fall injuries add $179 million to U.S. healthcare costs. Nonfatal fall injuries — most of which are preventable through risk analysis and treatment — cost $19 billion. One technology company founded by experts in Mechanical Engineering and Biomechanics believes it can slash those costs but it needs home care physical therapists to play a role.
by Michael McGowan My phone began to ring off the hook in early August and has not stopped yet. Over a three-week period, Medicare certified home health care providers in California and Nevada had begun to receive letters from Trust Solutions, LLC, requesting documentation of Medicare services they had provided and long since paid for. The […]
If home health care providers sometimes feel that government agencies treat the industry like a pre-ball Cinderella when it comes to payment rates, a new report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) will not make them feel any better. Though CMS continues to look for reasons to reduce payment rates to home care agencies, […]
National Research Corporation (NASDAQ:NRCI) announced Tuesday it has acquired, via a stock purchase agreement, Outcome Concept Systems, Inc. (OCS), a home care benchmarking and informatics firm founded in 1992, in an all-cash transaction. OCS will continue to be headquartered in Seattle and Amanda Twiss will remain as president.
During a period of rapid growth, Heritage Health Care Services expanded from seven offices to twelve. During the same period, the Ohio, Medicare certified, home care agency reduced its cadre of regional branch managers from six to three. The story of how they used technology to accomplish these efficiencies is not one you have heard […]
