What is a data/document gap? What is the result of a data/document gap? How do you solve the data/document gap?
Copy and Paste Errors in Healthcare
I attended the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) conference during the week of October 16 and learned about the complexities of copy-and-paste in healthcare. It’s a common problem that Extract’s automated data capture can help with.
The copy-and-paste function (CPF) is extremely prevalent in the EHR in efforts to improve efficiencies, foster prompt communication and increase time spent with patients. At the event, I learn that 7.4% of charts contain CPF information. This isn’t good for the following reasons...
4 Signs You Need an Advanced OCR Solution Now
Universal Interface for Non-Interfaced Labs
Non-interfaced data in healthcare is the “bane” of all clinical and administrative staff. If data is not interfaced, it’s not in the fields of the EMR, not in flow sheets, reports, trend analysis, etc. It causes more work for it to be moved, stored, and made accessible in EMR as scanned documents or otherwise. It makes continuation of care and quality of care much, much harder.
How can healthcare benefit from OCR?
Can you benefit from OCR?
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is powerful software that transforms images such as faxes and scanned documents into human readable text. Access to this text is very powerful and can be used for many purposes. The questions below will help you determine whether or not you could benefit from an OCR solution.
The Ongoing Threat of a HIPAA Breach
It couldn’t happen to us.
I doubt anyone still feels that a HIPAA breach is impossible in their organization. Results speak louder than words.
A quick search reveals that every year there is a large number of breaches in the US. There is no doubt these organizations know the threat of HIPAA breaches have taken some number of steps to protect against a breach but there is always more that could have been done to reduce/eliminate the exposure.
5 Tips to Boost Productivity in the Lab
Let’s be honest. We could all use an extra hour in the day. Or two… or three… or even just 30 minutes!
In working with labs we have found one of the biggest pain points is the inability to find the time to scan or fax in lab results and manually enter the data into the EMR. This is an enormous issue, considering if these results aren’t entered into the EMR quickly and accurately, someone’s life could be in harm’s way.
24th Annual UNOS Transplant Management Forum: One More for the Books
Once again I had the pleasure of attending the 24th Annual UNOS Transplant Management Forum for my 4th time earlier this year. As always, it was a flurry of learning, knowledge-sharing, networking, and well-deserved awards for leaders in the industry.
It was as apparent this time as it was every time before, that the transplant community is a close-knit group who all struggle with similar things regardless of their geographical location. These struggles span across many areas, including financial, staffing, regulatory requirements, lack of organs, information technology, reporting, managing the constant deluge of paper, and many more. While I can't claim that Extract can help with all of these, there are two specific struggles that we excel at fixing: extracting discrete results from faxed external lab results and intelligently splitting, classifying, and filing large documents (such as referral packets) into patients' charts.
Navigate a Transplant System Improvement Agreement #6
How to Navigate a Transplant System Improvement Agreement Process Blog #5: The IPRT Visit and Action Plan
How to Navigate a Transplant System Improvement Agreement Process Blog #4
Previously we have discussed in general what happens when your center comes under regulatory scrutiny and what you can expect. Today, we will begin to look in greater detail at what a System Improvement Agreement (SIA) entails, the items that the hospital commits to fulfill and some strategies for addressing them.
How to Navigate a Transplant System Improvement Agreement Process #3: The System Improvement Agreement
The System Improvement Agreement (SIA)
In our previous post, we discussed what happens when your program receives a letter from either the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) or the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and your program's initial response. Today we will focus on what happens if CMS does not accept your mitigating factors application.
Quality Reporting in the EMR
Despite massive adoption of electronic medical records over the past several years, the promise of easy and nearly effortless chart abstraction from electronic medical records enabled by an interconnected web of interoperable EMRs sharing standardized data has yet to be fully realized. You need to look no further than the media tab to see the evidence that we have yet to arrive at this Utopian future.
How to Navigate a Transplant System Improvement Agreement Process #2: You Received a Letter in the Mail, Now What?
Should you receive a letter from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the focus will likely be on a failure to meet one of the Conditions of Participation, most likely related to either graft or patient survival relative to expected results. Under the authority of 42 CFR §488.61, a transplant program may request that CMS consider mitigating factors in the re-approval process. There are three general areas that will be reviewed to determine whether a program can be approved based upon mitigating factors. These areas include, but are not limited to, the extent to which the outcome measures are met or exceeded, the availability of Medicare-approved transplant centers in the geographic area or extenuating circumstances that may have a temporary effect on the program's ability to meet the Conditions of Participation.
