HIPAA and ICD-10 Courses

One of the real telling things I learned this week as I traveled to the MGMA Annual Conference and then the CHIME Fall Forum was how unprepared organizations are for ICD-10 and HIPAA Omnibus. It was amazing the stories I heard and I’m sure these will be topics I write about much more in the future.

One of the stories I heard was a medical practice who was asked if they were ready for ICD-10. The practice said that they were ready. Then, they were asked what they’d done to prepare for ICD-10. Their response was that their vendor said that they were ready for ICD-10.

We could really dig in to reasons why that practice might want to verify that their EHR vendor is really ready, but we’ll save that for future posts. What was amazing to me was that this practice thought they didn’t need to do anything to train their doctors and coders on ICD-10 to be ready for the change. They’re in for a rude awakening.

At a minimum, these organizations should look at a course like the Certificate of ICD-10-CM Coding Proficiency (20% discount if you use that link and discount code). The course looks at the key changes in coding with the implementation of ICD-10. Plus, it’s a course that looks to bridge your ICD-9 knowledge to ICD-10. Once you start digging into this content, you realize why your organization better have some ICD-10 training or you’re organization will suffer.

The same applies to HIPAA. So many people don’t realize (or remember) that as part of HIPAA compliance you need to have regular HIPAA training for your staff. This is particularly true with all of the changes that came with HIPAA omnibus. How many in your organization know the details of the changes under HIPAA omnibus?

An online courses like the Certified HIPAA Security Professional are such a great option since you can work on them when you have time and come back to them later while helping to protect you against a HIPAA audit. Plus, the course linked above includes a HIPAA “Business Associate Agreement” downloadable template which I’m quite sure many organizations still need. I recently asked a doctor’s office I was working with for their EHR business associate agreement. They told me they didn’t have one (more on that in future posts). Really? Wow!

Certainly each of these courses and training take some commitment to complete. Although, when your colleagues ICD-10 reimbursement becomes an issue or the HIPAA auditor knocks on your door, you’ll sleep much better knowing you’ve made the investment. Those who don’t will likely pay for it later.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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