(Editor's Note: This guest blog was written from AHIMA's Health Information Integrity Summit by Sandra Kersten, MPH, RHIA, AHIMA director of HIM Solutions.) The American Health Information Management Association's Health Information Integrity Summit: The Quest for Safe, Usable, Quality Data in EHRs opened Thursday in Chicago with great insights ...

In a letter last week directed to Georgina Verdugo, JD, LLM, MPA, director of the Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Civil Rights (OCR), the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) responded to the July 14 proposed privacy rule changes pursuant to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). AHIMA President ...

(Editor's note: The following blog is written by Skyler Perkins, a full-time AuD student at ATSU - Arizona School of Health Sciences.) I usually experience healthcare from the provider's point of view, but I recently had the opportunity to experience it from the patient's perspective, and I learned a valuable lesson. During a routine follow-up ...

The Association of Health Information Outsourcing Services (AHIOS) gathered for its annual Spring meeting in New Orleans back in March. Joining the AHIOS members at the meeting were healthcare industry expert, Dr. Deborah Peel of Patient Privacy Rights and an expert from a Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) vendor. Both presenters emphasized the ...

(Editor's Note: This guest blog is written by Matthew T. Patton (mpatton@advanceweb.com), editor of ADVANCE for Medical Laboratory Professionals.) Wall Street failures. The housing market and mortgage industry collapse. The epic, disastrous BP oil spill. Huge mistakes with dire consequences for a large chunk of the global population. How can ...

The Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) submitted comments this week to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in response to the request for information, ''HIPAA Privacy Rule Accounting of Disclosures Under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act; Request for ...

Last month, I reported that the Office for Civil Rights had posted a list of covered entities with privacy breaches affecting more than 500 patients. The list is part of the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) new obligations under HITECH. Well, it looks like they're keeping the log up-to-date. I was tipped off by PHIprivacy.net that ...

In another HITECH milestone, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has posted a list of covered entities (CEs) that reported breaches affecting 500 or more individuals. The list, available to the public via OCR's Web site, fulfills an obligation outlined in last year's HITECH Act. CEs have been required to report such breaches since last ...

Yes, readers of the HIM world, it was 1 year ago today that President Obama took that fateful pen to paper and signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), paving the way for electronic health records (EHRs) and all the perks and headaches associated with them. The push for EHRs is part of the Health Information Technology for ...

The images are abundant; visual accounts of makeshift hospitals, open wounds and resilient patients. And it's not just on news networks. Ordinary doctors and nurses, upon returning from Haiti, are posting photos and videos on Facebook, Flickr and other content-sharing sites. It's an effective and jarring way to show how much help is needed, but I ...