In: Operations Management
The HIM director received a phone call from the circuit court clerk earlier today. She immediately contacted the ROI section and called a mandatory meeting of all ROI staff for that afternoon. The director gave a synopsis of the phone call. She explained that the circuit court clerk was relaying a message from the judge. The message was, “If one more chart is late or does not contain the requested information, then someone is going to have to explain it to me in court. Then, if there is not a good reason, I will hold you in contempt of court!”
How should the HIM director handle this? Include quality improvement, training, and other issues, as appropriate
Cite sources used
HIM profesionals are required to acquire, analyze, protect and use the medical informations related to the patients to provide them with quality medical care. They also need to comlpy to the HIPAA regulations, implement them in the organisations and train and update the personnel in security and privacy issues to avoid any case of breach. They also need to comply to the state and federal laws and standards related to security, privacy and documentation mandates.
As given in the case, the HIM Director is facing the court's ire for inefficiency in Release of Information ( ROI)in probably a HIPAA violation case, which stems from the delayed, incomplete and probably inaccurate information provided to the court. For preventing a contempt of court, the HIM Director should immediately take following steps.
(a) Identifying the source of delays and inefficiency in ROI and
correcting it,
(b) Training of the ROI and other personnel to make them aware of
the legal compliances, course of action in such circumstances and
potential penalties in such cases.
(c) Implementation of a chain of responsibility for meeting HIPAA compliances and time bound and accurate responses to the authorities as needed.
(d) Training of HIM employees to upgrade their skills and make them acquaint with latest developments,issues and challenges faced by the industry in the fields of security, privacy, customer service, compliance and dissemination of information to prepare them for delivering best in class services.
Ref: http://library.ahima.org/doc?oid=300429#.WweiBEiFPIU