Written by By Douglas Smith, MD, Founder of Musculoskeletal Imaging Consultants | April 12, 2013

The Milliman accounting firm has proposed a series of clinical and imaging criteria to satisfy and document as best practice before a surgical procedure is performed. Many insurance companies have adopted the Milliman criteria as absolute requirements before approving surgical fusions and other procedures and will reject pre-authorization unless each of the Milliman criteria are specifically documented in the medical records submitted in the pre-authorization packet. Ideally, the entire pre-operative evaluation process would be designed to document the Milliman criteria. Technology and terminology best practices must be adopted and all members of the preoperative planning team must be sensitive to the importance of documenting how the Milliman criteria are satisfied in each patient’s medical record. Here are some components of Milliman sensitive pre-operative evaluation process. Read the full article here courtesy of Beckers Spine Review.

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Read the full article here courtesy of Beckers Spine Review

In a survey of 80 health care organizations in the U.S., the Ponemon Institute found that nearly three-quarters said they don’t secure their medical devices, even though they contain sensitive patient data. The organizations were not named.

“This finding may reflect the possibility that they believe it is the responsibility of the vendor — not the health care provider — to protect these devices,” said the report by Ponemon, an independent research organization.

The results point to a new danger to patients’ privacy at a time when medical providers are moving toward electronic records and the sharing of files on so-called health information exchanges. Read the full article here courtesy of Bloomberg.com

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“The health and safety of our players continues to be our number one priority,” Brian McCarthy, NFL’s vice president of communications, tells Healthcare IT News. “We want to provide team medical staff with the latest technology that will help with their care and treatment of players in real time at the team facility, in the locker room [and] on the sidelines. This solution will help medical staff with secure real-time information to make decisions that will benefit the player.”
Read the full article here courtesy of healthcareitnews.com.

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Dr. Suzanne Dabbous is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and obtained her medical training at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio where she was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha National Honorary Medical Society in 1994. Her internship training was completed in Otolaryngology at Emory University in Atlanta and she completed residency training in Diagnostic Radiology at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.
She was certified by the American Board of Radiology in 1999 and completed her
Neuroradiology Fellowship training at Emory University in Atlanta. Dr. Dabbous returned to San Antonio following her Fellowship training and joined South Texas Radiology Group and became a partner in 2003 and has worked closely with San Antonio physicians for the past 12 years. She is a respected expert in neuroradiology, ENT imaging, breast imaging, and body CT.

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CMS had 14 breaches of protected health information (PHI) between Sept. 23,  2009, and Dec. 31, 2011, affecting 13,775 Medicare beneficiaries, according to  the HHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG). The beneficiaries were notified,  but CMS failed to meet several notification requirements detailed in the  American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, OIG found. Read more here courtesy of fiercehealthit.com

RADIOLOGY AS A SERVICE is now a registered Trademark of Musculoskeletal Imaging Consultants. RADIOLOGY AS A SERVICE is a cloud computing featuring software for use in database management, data archiving, and medical director services in the field of radiology.

http://www.trademarkia.com/radiology-as-a-service-85679851.html

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HIPAA: Privacy, Social Media, and Cloud Computing

U.S. healthcare has been revolutionized by three fundamental pressures:
1. increasing governmental and public demand for increased patient accessibility and health information interoperability;
2. progressively stricter HIPAA privacy and security regulations
3. plummeting compensation for medical services and resulting consolidation of service providers into larger more proprietary closed networks.

Cast your vote here!

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1. Medicare has risen higher among the list of Republican voters’ priorities, replacing the healthcare reform law, according to Kaiser’s August Health Tracking Poll.

2. Healthcare revenue growth rates hit a wall in the June 2011 through June 2012 time span, as all nine Standard & Poor’s Healthcare Economic Indices dropped from May 2012 figures. The Hospital Medicare Index slumped to 1.96 percent.

3. Medicare accountable care organizations are receiving a lot of publicity, but Medicaid ACOs are beginning to take form as well, as seven states are working to develop and launch their own Medicaid ACOs.

4. A survey found Medicare RAC audits are most common types of audits among hospitals and healthcare providers, with 47 percent of all entities reporting at least one. On average, for-profits reported less than four within the past 12 months, whereas non-profits reported more than six.
Read all of the Issue’s Here, courtesy of Beckers Hospital Review.