Most medical practices view HIPAA compliance as maintaining appropriate documentation regarding patient notices and consents, and controlling access to the PHI within the office; that’s PRIVACY.  Practices tend to forget the technology/security side of HIPAA, which requires maintaining, or reasonably attempting to maintain, secure EHR/IT systems; that’s SECURITY. Athens Orthopedic Clinic PA agreed to pay $1.5 million in damages to settle potential violations of HIPAA following a self-reported breach report informing OCR that approximately 208,000…

The American Health Law Association and Health IT News recently published reports indicating enormous increases in telehealth hacking attacks. Sam Kassoumeh, COO of Health IT News and Co-Founder of SecurityScorecard, stated: “The rapid pace at which telehealth applications were ruled out during the pandemic made them attractive targets for cyber criminals . . . Our report (SecurityScorecard) findings illustrate that in order for the health care industry to protect patients and provide data, bidding and…

Use this link for information on the Wheeling Hospital case.…

Attached is a link to the fact sheet for “proposed policy, payment, and quality provisions changes to Medicare physician fee schedule for calendar year 2021”. Among other things, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposes to: Significantly decrease the Medicare Work Relative Value Unit (WRVU) conversion factor from $36.09 to $32.26 Significantly revise the WRVU waiting and coding guidelines for popular E&M Codes 99211-99215 Significant WRVU decreases for radiology, CRNAs and chiropractors Additional telehealth…

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published the new hospital outpatient and ambulatory surgical center fee schedule for 2021 on August 12, 2020 at this this link:  https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/08/12/2020-17086/medicare-program-hospital-outpatient-prospective-payment-and-ambulatory-surgical-center-payment As part of the proposed revisions, CMS intends to transfer over 1,500 procedures from the “inpatient only” category, including 266 musculo-skeletal procedures as of 2021, the explanation and list of which begins on page 386 in the attached link. For additional information contact Mike Cassidy.…

Mike Cassidy’s article, “Return to practice under the COVID threat” appears in the Bulletin of the Allegheny County Medical Society June edition.…