Author: Abraham, Prinny

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: April 2000

The growing pains of the past decade have led to medical record backlogs and record retrieval crises for many home healthcare agencies. These problems have pushed more than one agency director into enlisting the skills of an HIM professional to evaluate the medical record systems in pl....

Author: Dougherty, Michelle

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: April 2000

Q: When are rubber-stamp signatures acceptable? I read in a Part A newsletter that Medicare no longer accepts rubber-stamp signatures on documents that certify, order, or justify a service billed to Medicare. The newsletter cited the Medicare Conditions of Participation for hospitals (42CFR4....

Author: Moczygemba, Jackie; Biedermann, Sue E.

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: April 2000

The master patient index (MPI) is a powerful tool in healthcare organizations that HIM professionals are largely responsible for managing and maintaining. This article takes a look at MPI core elements and practice patterns in acute care facilities.


Mergers and....

Author: Welch, Julie J.

Source: AHIMA practice brief

Publication Date: March 2000

The content in this practice brief has been retired. More recent information is available here.

Author: AHIMA Board of Directors

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: March 2000

[The Standards of Ethical Coding have been updated. You can view the most current version here.]

Author: Murphy, Gretchen

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: March 2000

Patients and providers are increasingly communicating via e-mail. But healthcare organizations are slow in adopting policies to address important issues and manage this new communication form. Here's what you can do to develop some measures.
Like most industries, healthcare is undergoing....

Author: Grzybowski, Darice

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: March 2000

By taking full advantage of new technology and adopting an innovative approach to processing deficiencies, this hospital saved money and time. (FORE Best Practice, AHIMA Foundation)

Author: Hughes, Gwen

Source: AHIMA practice brief

Publication Date: February 2000

This practice brief has been retired. It is made available for historical purposes only.

Author: Hefferan, Colleen; Ludwig-Beymer, Patti

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: February 2000

Chicago-area Advocate Health Care's recent congestive heart failure (CHF) care management initiative demanded an HIM professional's specialized skills and insight into information exchange. As a member of the interdisciplinary team recruited from Advocate's eight-hospital integrated de....

Author: Osborn, Carol E.

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: February 2000

How does your HIM department measure up? A national benchmarking survey of acute care facilities will give you some answers. Take a look at your colleagues' practice patterns.



HIM professionals often are asked to provide information on how their department....

Author: Welch, Julie J.

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: February 2000

Q: The ambulatory care facility where I work is considering implementing an electronic signature process. Is the use of electronic signature acceptable in ambulatory care? Also, what guidelines for this are available?

Q: What Internet security guidelines are available?
<....

Author: Rulon, Vera; Tully, Lorraine

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: February 2000

Here's how HIM professionals came to the fore at Oxford Health Plans as a new clinical audit process became a way to address claims submission isssues and save money. (FORE Best Practice, AHIMA Foundation)

Author: Carpenter, Jennifer E.

Source: AHIMA practice brief

Publication Date: January 2000

This practice brief has been updated. See the latest version here. This version is made available for historical purposes only.

Author: Noller, Janice R.

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: January 2000

To investigate high complication rates, coders at this facility found themselves working to improve communication, physician understanding of coder issues, and data quality. (FORE Best Practice, AHIMA Foundation)

Author: Gleberman, Amy L.

Source: Journal of AHIMA - Coding Notes

Publication Date: January 2000

Incentive programs can be a good tool for increasing productivity while maintaining coding quality. Employees who are rewarded for extra production will likely perpetuate higher levels of productivity. High coding productivity can improve a healthcare organization's bottom line by sh....

Author: Kramer, Lynette; Meeks, Richard

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: January 2000

If you asked HIM professionals about key success factors that substantially impact timely and accurate coding, three of the most common answers might be:
availability of the record immediately after the patient visit
availability of the complete record....

Author: Rulon, Vera

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: January 2000

What will facilitate medical product regulation and related electronic data interchange worldwide? For some regulatory authorities, the answer is the Medical Dictionary for Drug Regulatory Affairs—also known as MedDRA.

MedDRA (the name is a trademark of the International Federat....

Author: Fletcher, Donna M.

Source: AHIMA practice brief

Publication Date: November 1999

This practice brief has been retired. It is made available for historical purposes only.

Author: Fletcher, Donna M.

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: November 1999

Can our visionary leaders solve our problems? Sometimes. But more often, the reality is the power to solve problems lies with us. This is the fundamental assumption of the "adaptive work" concept presented in this article—along with some real-life examples of HIM adaptive work in action.....

Author: Rupp, Cheryl

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: November 1999

In any situation, there is a positive side and a negative side. At any moment, I decide.
—author unknown        


Compliance has become the trendy buzzword in almost every industry these days, but perhaps nowhere is it quite as prevalent as....

Author: AHIMA Compliance Task Force

Source: AHIMA practice brief

Publication Date: October 1999

This practice brief has been retired. It is made available for historical purposes only.

Author: Zender, Anne

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: October 1999

Considerable attention has been paid to the development of organizationwide information security policies—especially what they should contain and how they should be put in place. But enforcing these policies isn't always easy. We asked four information security experts to give us....

Author: Welch, Julie J.

Source: AHIMA practice brief

Publication Date: September 1999

The information in this practice brief has been updated. The most recent information is available here.

Author: Fletcher, Donna M.

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: September 1999

From the onset of DRGs in 1983 through today's proliferation of prospective payment systems (PPS) and managed care efforts, the number of terms related to reimbursement has increased significantly. The following are some of those terms and abbreviations, including those r....

Author: Rhodes, Harry B.

Source: AHIMA practice brief

Publication Date: July 1999

This practice brief has been updated. See the latest version here. This version is made available for historical purposes only.

Author: Carrier, Danielle

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: July 1999

Medical record accuracy, record completion time, physician satisfaction—all of these are indicators of how well an HIM department is performing. The findings of a UHC benchmarking study may point the way to best practices that can be shared and adapted.

What....

Author: Fletcher, Donna M.

Source: AHIMA practice brief

Publication Date: June 1999

This practice brief has been updated. See the latest version here. This version is made available for historical purposes only.

Author:

Source: AHIMA practice brief attachment

Publication Date: June 1999

This practice brief has been updated. See the latest version here. This version is made available for historical purposes only.

Author: Gentry, Lynne; Harnish, Patricia A.

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: June 1999

After approximately 150,000 (out of 787,000) medical record numbers in a master patient index (MPI) were identified as possible duplicates, MultiCare Health System in Tacoma, WA, decided to address the problem through a multidisciplinary approach. An MPI conversion to a new hospital in....

Author: Burgess, Barbara

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: June 1999

How does a busy student health center on a state university campus implement an electronic health record? This is the story of how Hall Health Primary Care Center (HHPCC), a community-based primary care center at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, did just that.

Author: Wager, Karen A.; Lee, Frances Wickham; Glorioso, Robert; Bergstrom, LuAnne

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: June 1999

When Spring Garden Family Practice (SGFP) in York, PA, converted from paper records to an electronic medical record (EMR) four years ago, the medical director wanted his staff to work smarter, not harder.

The staff's productivity was impaired by sorting through tons of paper....

Author: Dixon-Lee, Claire

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: June 1999

On a trip to Dublin this spring, I met with several officers of the Healthcare Informatics Society of Ireland. During this visit, we talked about health information management, finding common ground on topics like:
Year 2000 compliance
the need for clinical vocabulary....

Author: Carpenter, Jennifer E.

Source: AHIMA practice brief

Publication Date: May 1999

This practice brief has been retired. It is made available for historical purposes only.

Author: Kloss, Linda L

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: May 1999

It is precisely when an old paradigm crumbles and the new one is not yet in place that we get great bursts of creative thinking."1 I'm convinced that this is such a moment for HIM.

The old paradigm of a static, facility-bound record is, unfortunately, still the norm,....

Author: Sourapas, Joan

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: May 1999

What does a home health agency have in common with a typical Fortune 500 company? Though their activities and goals may differ, both organizations can benefit from the use of the balanced scorecard approach to measuring and enhancing performance.

Since Harvard professo....

Author: Buff, Elizabeth Logan; Hohmann, Samuel

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: May 1999

How can health information help an organization improve its performance? The authors offer an approach to measuring performance using familiar tools—a compass and a dashboard.



A healthcare organization uses clinical data in a number of ways—to....

Author: Doyon, Cynthia; Thompson, Kim; Meottel, Lori

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: May 1999

Best practices don't have to be expensive or difficult. Sometimes changing a process for the better simply means looking at it from a new angle. Here's how one hospital staff collaborated on simple changes that made a difference.

When it comes to reengineering processes....

Author: Lorence, Daniel P.

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: May 1999

Previous issues of the Journal of AHIMA, along with other health information publications, have featured examples of benchmarking and best practices, describing how healthcare organizations use the process of benchmarking to identify the "best in class" achievements for a given organ....

Author: Fuller, Sandra R.

Source: AHIMA practice brief

Publication Date: April 1999

This practice brief has been retired. It is made available for historical purposes only.

Author: Brandt, Mary D.; Rhodes, Harry B.

Source: AHIMA practice brief | Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: March 1999

This practice brief has been updated. See the latest version here. This version is made available for historical purposes only.

Author: Miller, Judith A.

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: March 1999

A new requirement of the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations requires hospitals and other healthcare entities to forward performance measurement data for use in the accreditation process. The Joint Commission calls this performance measurement....

Author: Osborn, Carol E.

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: March 1999

As HIM professionals, we want to be assured that we are providing the highest quality data for reimbursement and research purposes. We can review coded data internally, but this does not give us a clear picture of the total information that is being submitted to the Health Care Financing Admin....

Author: Ballam, Holly

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: March 1999

Information Security Program
XYZ Hospital
Effective Date      
         ..............................................................................................................................

1. Poli....

Author: Fletcher, Donna M.

Source: AHIMA practice brief

Publication Date: February 1999

This practice brief has been retired. It is made available for historical purposes only.

Author: Dixon-Lee, Claire

Source: Journal of AHIMA

Publication Date: February 1999

This time of year may find us longing for a chair by a cozy fireplace or lounging on a sunny beach. When we find time for reflection, it's good to periodically reflect on ourselves and the image that we project as HIM professionals.

Authority Robert Camp defines benchmarki....

Author: Rhodes, Harry B.; Larson, Joan C.

Source: AHIMA practice brief attachment

Publication Date: January 1999

This practice brief has been retired. It is made available for historical purposes only.

Author: Rhodes, Harry B.; Larson, Joan C.

Source: AHIMA practice brief attachment

Publication Date: January 1999

This practice brief has been retired. It is made available for historical purposes only.

Author: Rhodes, Harry B.; Larson, Joan C.

Source: AHIMA practice brief attachment

Publication Date: January 1999

This practice brief has been retired. It is made available for historical purposes only.

Author: Rhodes, Harry B.; Larson, Joan C.

Source: AHIMA practice brief attachment

Publication Date: January 1999

This practice brief has been retired. It is made available for historical purposes only.

Author: Rhodes, Harry B.; Larson, Joan C.

Source: AHIMA practice brief

Publication Date: January 1999

This practice brief has been retired. It is made available for historical purposes only.