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Health care organizations are discovering, as many industries have already learned, that thriving even surviving in a competitive marketplace means concentrating their talent and experience on what they do best, and offloading noncore services and administrative functions to vendors who can do them better, faster, and cheaper.
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CMS makes change to critical access rule; NPI final rule released by CMS; Study: Providers getting better terms
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University of Michigan (UM) researchers said at the annual scientific session of the American College of Cardiology held March 7-10 in New Orleans that HIPAA has significantly affected their ability to study heart attack patients after they are discharged from the hospital.
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The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI), which advises the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on issues related to administrative simplification under HIPAA, says the agency should show continued patience as covered entities continue to make progress in implementation of the HIPAA transactions and code sets (TCS) requirements.
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Encouragement from the Bush administration for hospitals to give discounts to uninsured patients and financially needy Medicare beneficiaries will have little impact, say some access professionals surveyed by Hospital Access Management, mostly because hospitals already give such discounts under the name of charity care and uncollectible bad debt.
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In response to suggestions that two laws enforced by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) may prevent hospitals from offering discounted prices to uninsured patients. The OIG discusses each law on its web site, www.oig.hhs.gov, as follows.
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As part of the financial aid program at the New Orleans-based Touro Infirmary, there is a clinic for uninsured or underinsured patients, says Beth Keith, CHAM, director of patient business services.
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At least two state legislatures have taken action in recent weeks regarding free or discounted health care services for uninsured patients, according to reports in the on-line news service, AHA News Now.
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An all-employee guest-relations program at Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago aims to increase both the hospitals market share and its Press Ganey Associates patient satisfaction scores.
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When access personnel at the University Hospital of Arkansas in Little Rock decided they would benefit from having their own resource web site, they sent the proposal to the information technology (IT) department, says Holly Jones, CHAM, a revenue integrity specialist (RIS) given the task of overseeing the project.
