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Author: VettersEnt
Corrected YouTube Video
BUMMER! I found out that my first CoffeeChat Video was cut off so I uploaded a new one that appears to be “all there”. This technology stuff is hard!
CoffeeChat #2 Is up on our YouTube Channel
Take a listen to our latest CoffeeChat https://youtu.be/zMKxGhcfdVY here on our YouTube channel. This episode talks about how just getting a HIPAA Risk Assessment is not enough to be HIPAA compliant according to HITECH and OMNIBUS regulations. Use the contact us page to find out how CompliancyGuard can help your practice Achieve, Illustrate and Maintain HIPAA compliance.
How can CompliancyGuard help you avoid HIPAA fines?
Well I will tell you how…
CompliancyGuard is like an insurance policy that protects you from failing HIPAA audits and the excessive fines that can come with those.
The fact is that over 70% of Covered Entities (CEs) will fail their HIPAA audits. And while the reasons for such failures can be all over the place, primarily it will be because of inadequate preparation to achieve complete HIPAA compliance and the inability to maintain compliance after initial risk assessment.
What CompliancyGuard does for you and your practice is simply and effectively provide you a “One-Stop-Shop” solution that sets you up for success and allows you to Achieve, Illustrate and Maintain HIPAA compliance so that it is completely taken off your plate. It is a HIPAA compliance officer in a box. Check out these case studies and tell me you don’t want to have this solution in your back pocket when the HIPAA auditors come knocking!
Get on the “Road to 10”
CMS is pushing hard to get everyone prepared for 10/1/2015. What is that date all about? That is the drop dead date for ICD-10 conversion. CMS says they are not pushing the date for compliance back any further and I know most of you are saying “Yeah right…that’s what they said last year”. Well in our opinion it’s got to happen this year. Check out CMS’ “Road to 10” website and tools. This site has been improving and improving over time and it looks to us like they are ready to pull the trigger.
http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Coding/ICD10/index.html
We know most of you are grudgingly preparing or angrily protesting the change but in reality this is one of the best things to happen in healthcare. ICD-10 coding is going to really go a long way to help agencies track the healthcare that is administered in this country accurately. Because ICD-10 coding requires the providers to be more specific about the patient’s medical condition, in the long term this can mean:
- More funding towards specific diagnosis and treatment
- More funding to areas of the country experiencing specific diagnosis ranges
- Increased research into specific diagnosis
- Analytics and reporting to help providers in their areas
By no longer supporting the “unspecified” diagnosis codes we get a clearer picture of the country’s predisposition to certain diagnoses in specific regions of the country. That way it won’t take someone accidentally finding that a small town in PA had less heart disease per capita than the rest of the country. It will be through precise analytics.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-rock-positano/the-mystery-of-the-roseta_b_73260.html
The rest of the world is already using ICD-11 and it is about time America attempted to catch up. Converting to ICD-10 is a step in the right direction.
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!
We went all out on this one! I will be having a series of videos called CoffeeChats where I will discuss some of the challenges facing medical practitioners in private practice. I started with a HIPAA compliance overview and I will be delving deeper into that subject with additional videos in the series.
HIPAA is a huge set of regulations and believe it or not over 70% of practices are not HIPAA compliant and over 79% of practices will fail their Meaningful Use HIPAA audits. It’s a challenging landscape to try and navigate and VE Cycle Management wants to help you succeed and achieve HIPAA compliance. Our web-based “one-stop-shop” solution CompliancyGuard can help you do this. We will learn more about what advantages CompliancyGuard has over other services out there and why you need it during this series of videos. Watch the first one now and don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBcw7_mnHeIR6eLKv2F4JxA/videos
Thinking of starting your own practice?
With over 70% of hospital employees getting out and getting back into private practice whether they have done it before or doing it for the first time this article has the top 5 things we recommend our providers do before starting out on their own. They don’t teach you this in med school!
http://www.kareo.com/gettingpaid/2014/09/the-5-first-steps-to-start-a-new-medicalpractice/
Now of course we recommend outsourcing as many activities as you can, and we can help you with cost effective solutions and personal service that a national company can’t compete with. Please consider us as a source to help you in improving your reimbursement and gaining efficiencies in your office!
ICD 10 Delayed – Again
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services posted in August 2014 that the road to ICD-10 compliance will be another year longer. The new date for conversion is 10/1/2015. As we’ve published before, this conversion is long over due and WILL be coming at some point even if they keep pushing back the date.
This conversion was not a part of the Affordable Care Act, so if you are thinking that if the ACA goes away so will this conversion and that is just simply “head in the sand” thinking. This is an implementation of a international coding standard and we here in the US are just behind the curve with the rest of the western world in using this new classification system. We do need to catch up and we eventually will. Don’t let this conversion scare you out of your practice! I have had a lot of providers tell me that they will quit first before converting, and that just isn’t practical. ICD-10 will benefit the medical community by increasing the accuracy of diagnosis coding and allow entitlement programs and insurance carriers to gain more specificity in tracking diagnosis populations. With more specificity comes more attention which leads to more reimbursement for the provider.
If you are a small practice, I urge you to check out the CMS website for the “Road to 10” implementation map
Road to 10: CMS Online Tool for Small Practices
CMS has released Road to 10, an online resource built with the help of providers in small practices, is now available. This tool is intended to help small medical practices jumpstart their ICD-10 transition.
“Road to 10” includes specialty references and gives providers the capability to build ICD-10 action plans tailored for their practice needs.
Also, VE Cycle Management specializes in providing solutions that are already ICD-10 ready. We can help! Contact us today!
ICD-10 Delay
So on 3/31/14 both the house and senate voted on a “Dr. Fix” bill that included language for another one year delay on the ICD-10 implementation. CMS has been saying for more than a year that there will be no more delays…period… Then what does the congress do? Overrule them. Many healthcare organizations are speaking out that the delay portion of the bill did not have to be included. That congress has once again cost us billions of dollars by not listening to their constituency or the experts when it comes to throwing in additional pieces of legislature just to pad the bill. Here is what the American Healthcare Information Management Association had to say: http://journal.ahima.org/2014/03/31/senate-votes-on-icd-10-delay-bill/
While most experts agree it was a stupid move to include the delay in the bill, now providers are wondering what they are supposed to do. Check out this link: http://www.fiercehealthit.com/story/icd-10-delay-how-providers-should-respond/2014-04-02
As far as VE Cycle Management is concerned we are going to continue to prepare our clients for ICD-10 as part of what we do for them daily. Providers now have some extra time to train, map and migrate and may think that the road to full implementation will be slowed again. The point is and the point that my company will emphasize is “don’t put off tomorrow what you can do today!”
ICD-10 is still coming, we are the only western nation still on ICD-9, most of Europe is on ICD-11 so it’s just a matter of time and you have to make sure your staff, technology, and you are ready for it. Ask us, we’ll help!
The Perils of Business Ownership
Now don’t get me wrong, I love being my own boss. This is what I have waited for all my life, I think. When you have been raised under the poverty line you do everything you can to make sure that when you finally get to be an adult that you never dip below that line again.
Thus has been my goal throughout my life. I think when you add children into the mix it becomes a serious goal. Reaching my 30s-40s it seemed like the stuff I had gave me status in my mind. I had a house, garage, 2 cars, a kid, nice stuff. I must have made it somehow. Certainly better than my parents did, I thought, in my mind. As I am moving out of my 40s and soon into the big 5-0 I realized that I had it all wrong. As a person with an innate entrepreneurial spirit, you are always wanting more, and it isn’t more stuff. That isn’t what does it. It’s more meaning and purpose in your life that turns the motor on. I realized this when I buried my parents 7 months and 10 days apart. All their stuff, their memories, prized possessions now became scrutinized by everyone and their purpose in life became increasingly more obscured. What were they here for. Surely this pile of old clothes and pots and pans didn’t tell that story.
So I began my journey into business ownership because I wanted my purpose in life to be more important than what the money from a “job” got me. Oh I won’t lie, when the business isn’t doing well all I am thinking about is what am I going to have to give up or what am I going to lose, my house, my car, all of it. But yet I still get up and I still try and find new ways to get my business name and purpose out there, I’m not giving up the spirit that drives me, that innate entrepreneurial spirit that has taken hold of me and made me the mad woman I am today.
I love running the show, I love being my own boss, I love what I do for the first time. Is it scary…HELL TO THE YEAH! But it’s my rules, my vision, my choice. I’ve got some great support and one hell of a marketing director and we are going to make it. And for the first time in decades my back brain is not saying “you should be doing something else, this isn’t you”. You don’t know how long I have wanted to quiet that voice. I think he’s finally speechless for a while.