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By L. Carol Ritchie for NPR For most of his career, Dr. Stephen Trzeciak was not a big believer in the “touchy-feely” side of medicine. As a specialist in intensive care and chief of medicine at Cooper University Health Care in Camden, N.J., Trzeciak felt most at home in the hard sciences. Then his new…
By Lisa A. Eramo, MA for For the Record Why Your Hospital’s Reputation Depends—at Least Partially—on Accurate Pneumonia Coding These days, it takes seconds for patients to view mortality and readmissions data on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Hospital Compare website (www.medicare.gov/hospitalcompare). With a few clicks of the mouse, they can—and frequently do—draw…
By Jeff Lagasse for Healthcare Finance A healthy revenue cycle can’t stay healthy for long without a strong collections process, and collections can’t stay strong unless there’s money to collect. That means health systems are increasingly behaving like brands, seeking to attract patients — and their pocketbooks. Nowadays, attracting patients means taking a more consumer-focused…
By Jackie Drees for Becker’s Hospital Review A parody account on Twitter highlighting physicians’ frustrations with EMR systems has gained more than 10,000 followers since it launched last month, WBUR reports. The account, EPICparodyEMR, is managed by a male physician at a “major East Coast-based hospital,” according to WBUR. The account’s creator did not reveal…
By Jackie Drees for Becker’s Hospital Review Battle Creek, Mich.-based Brookside ENT and Hearing Center is shutting down after cyber hackers deleted all the practice’s patient records, WWMT, a CBS affiliate, reports. Hackers obtained no patient information because the practice’s EHR system encrypted the files, John Bizon, MD, co-founder of Brookside ENT and Hearing Center,…
By Ayla Ellison for Becker’s Hospital Review From reimbursement landscape challenges to dwindling patient volumes, many factors lead hospitals to close. Here are the factors that led eight hospitals to close so far this year: 1. Belmont Community Hospital, a 99-bed hospital in Bellaire, Ohio, closed April 5. Hospital officials cited a decline in patient volume as the…
By Kelly Gooch for Becker’s Hospital Review The American Medical Association and UnitedHealthcare are supporting the development of 23 billing codes related to social determinants of health. The healthcare system lacks a consistent, organized way to capture such non medical needs as food, housing and access to transportation, and incorporate them into individual care plans,…
By Charles Corfield for nVoq For many physicians alternative/complementary medicine is a sore point, where magical thinking on the part of patients and unproven/false claims by practitioners lead to significant harm (people die or are severely injured). When it comes to AI, physicians, too, may risk succumbing to magical thinking and could benefit from some…
By Cathy Farraher, RN, MBA, CCM, CCDS for ACDIS CDI Blog Ethics. My favorite topic! Being a hopelessly optimistic and naïve person, I am often surprised by unethical behavior. I have seen it in management and employees alike, and it always comes as a shock. Once I have identified this behavior in an individual, they…
By Susan Morse for Healthcare Finance The focus on electronic health record implementation has turned to how to make use of the vast data stored within to improve revenue cycle operations. “These EHRs capture so much data. The trick is translating that data into information,” said Cynthia Sikina, vice president of Financial Services with consulting…