CMS has extended a delay in the enforcement of Final Rule 1599-F by prolonging the probe and educate period. This is the third time CMS has delayed enforcement of the policy, which requires a patient to stay in the hospital for more than two midnights before CMS will reimburse a hospital at...
Credentialing Resource Center Digest - Volume 15, Issue 6
Roughly 61% of healthcare organizations nationwide reported some form of security breach, data loss, or unplanned downtime this past year, Healthcare IT News reported earlier this week. According to a new health IT report by MeriTalk, these security events cost U.S. hospitals an estimated...
Credentialing Resource Center Digest - Volume 15, Issue 6
Hospitals can be very dangerous places for patients, according to a KevinMD blog post by Robert Pearl, MD, earlier this week. Pearl outlined four risks that hospitals pose, along with their causes and possible solutions that could save lives. The risks are: psychological harm, physical harm,...
Credentialing Resource Center Digest - Volume 15, Issue 6
The Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) has announced that its Federation Credentials Verification Service (FCVS) will implement a new procedure for identity verification. Effective February 6, each applicant will be required to complete and mail a Certification of Identification (CID)...
What does pay for performance mean for locum tenens physicians? Since locum tenens physicians may work at multiple locations within a year, it is vital for them to keep up with their own procedure logs from all work locations, according to Di Hall, CPCS, CPMSM, director of compliance and...
Here’s some good advice from the news this week: Locum tenens physicians are asked to “have patience with the administrative needs of the [review] process.” Di Hall’s advice could be applied to other physicians as well. If your organization is looking for a way to save both MSPs’ and...
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has released new guidance for graduate medical education in U.S. teaching hospitals and medical centers. The council’s effort creates the framework to reshape the clinical environments in which tomorrow’s physicians learn to...
The public has until the end of the day today to submit suggestions for revisions to the NPDB Guidebook. The updated National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) guide will incorporate legislative and regulatory changes adopted since its last edition (2001), including the merger of the NPDB...
Credentialing Resource Center Digest - Volume 15, Issue 5
Last month a panel of experts recommended that the threshold for treating people over 60 for hypertension be raised from 140/90 to 150/90. The panel determined that there was little evidence that lowering systolic blood pressures between 140 and 149 in older people caused more good than harm....
Credentialing Resource Center Digest - Volume 15, Issue 5
As chilling as our top story is this week, it might lead to a discussion about the widening variety of care sought by patients. “Alternative therapies” are part of the lexicon for many people, and physicians shouldn’t dismiss them completely if there is replicable, clinical study evidence that...
