Physicians must be educated on proper documentation to meet ICD-10 code-set specificity and payer-coverage policies.  Guest commentary from Holly Louie, RN, CHBME, PCS, corporate compliance officer at Practice Management, Inc., in Boise, Idaho The reimbursement impact of ICD-10 implementation on providers has the potential to be more ...

What a week for women's screening guidelines. After the major announcement that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force published new guidelines which recommended against routine mammography screening for women in their 40s, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) is now recommending women begin cervical cancer screening at ...

About four months ago, I posted a blog asking our readers if they were using social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., for professional purposes. The majority of those who responded seem to have discovered social media as a pretty good way to connect with their peers in the industry.   Consider these comments we ...

Guest commentary from Valerie M. Chapman, RN, MSN I am a wife, a mother of two awesome kids, a daughter, a sister and a nurse. I am also a survivor. At the age of 43 a routine screening mammogram picked up an abnormality in my left breast that turned out to be invasive lobular carcinoma. I had no family history or major risk factors, but ...

Nurses are big proponents of evidence-based practice. Nurses are working hard to move away from ''this is how it's always been done,'' or ''I had a patient once who had a reaction to that treatment so I don't do it.'' A big part of looking at evidence is numbers. Nurses need to question whether something can be considered evidence based on the ...

Valerie M. Chapman, MSN, RN, has been a pediatric nurse for 25 years and is a 3-year breast cancer survivor. She lives in Medford, NJ. I am a wife, a mother of two awesome kids, a daughter, a sister and a nurse. I am also a survivor. At the age of 43 a routine screening mammogram picked up an abnormality in my left breast that turned out to ...

...well, not really. In the beautiful world of social networking and social media, you can live in infamy, for the rest of your earthly existence or beyond for that matter. Facebook recently posted a blog about the need to memorialize an account when someone dies (and to think, life used to be so easy). Now, not only do you have to file a ...

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are mine personally, and are not necessarily representative of Texas Health Resources (THR) or its subsidiaries. Last week, one of our hospitals went live on CPOE. My boss and I were there as part of the ribbon-cutting ceremony and to commend IT and the hospital for their hard work. When we met in ...

Guest commentary from Celwyn C. Evans, a senior partner at Greencastle Associates Consulting in Malvern, Pa. With the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, the focus of debate has fallen squarely on the challenge of defining ''meaningful ...

Some people scoff at the younger generation's seeming dependence on social media. ''Who needs text messaging or Facebook or MySpace? What's wrong with picking up the phone and calling someone?'' ask some old-schoolers. And they'll further the attack with, ''Who cares what Ashton Kutcher has to say about his wife, Demi Moore? He can keep ...