Healthcare News Archives

Are Health Care Providers Prepared to Treat the Latino Population Adequately?

By Mari Cely / September 10, 2018 / Comments Off

Is “lost in translation” the only risk providers face when trying to adequately serve the Latino population with healthcare needs and challenges? Two big “No-no’s” in this scenario.

ICD-10-PCS Codes Updates – FY2019

By Ann Zeisset / July 24, 2018 / Comments Off

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the 2019 ICD-10-PCS code changes for fiscal year(FY) 2019. After the codes are approved in the FY 2019 IPPS Final Rule, they will be implemented by all hospital inpatient coding professionals with discharges occurring on October 1, 2018.

YES CDI Specialist: Liaison between CDI and Coding

By Amy Davis / July 24, 2018 / Comments Off

The role of the YES Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) Specialist is to be a liaison and a partner, to compare the facility CDIS Medicare severity diagnosis-related group (MS-DRG) to the facility coder MS-DRG when there is a mismatch between the two MS-DRGs.

Urgent Care Boom Equates to Increase in Hospital’s Revenue per Admission

By YES HIM Consulting / July 24, 2018 / Comments Off

Over the course of the last decade, U.S. hospitals are continuing to expand their urgent care clinic networks. According to a NPR/Kaiser Health News report from December 2017, the primary goals for adopting a more decentralized approach through urgent care facilities include: Expanding the footprint/brand of the health system (at a discounted rate); Generating new referrals; Keeping patients out of the ED (40% of ED visits nationwide DO NOT require Emergency Services); and boosting patient satisfaction.

Electronic Health Records (EHR) Still Need HUMAN-LEVEL Interaction to be Efficient

By Karen Youmans / July 24, 2018 / Comments Off

Though many patients and healthcare providers complain about the use of EHRs, there is a set of guidelines that can make the EHR an effective tool to improve communication and trust between patients and providers.

New Medicare Cards Replace the SSN-based Health Insurance Claim Number

By Karen Youmans / May 22, 2018 / Comments Off

The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has officially started to mail new Medicare cards to beneficiaries. The new cards will use a unique, randomly assigned number called a Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI) to replace the SSN-based Health Insurance Claim Number (HICN) currently used on Medicare cards. The law requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to issue new Medicare cards that do not display, code, or embed SSNs by April 2019.

VA and Cerner Agree on New EHR System – What’s Next?

By Mari Cely / May 22, 2018 / Comments Off

The Veterans Affairs Department and Cerner have agreed on a new Electronic Health Record (EHR) system for the VA. This means that the VA will be using Cerner EHR, the same software as the Department of Defense. The project, estimated to cost $16 billion, will take about 10 years to take full effect.