Hacking Healthcare: A Guide to Standards, Workflows, and Meaningful Use

Inpatient care typically operates on a larger scale, with many services and types of care contained within a single facility’s walls, whereas outpatient facilities depend more on partnerships and referrals to outside parties.

When it is returned electronically, it is more frequently called electronic remittance advice (ERA).

Healthcare is orders of magnitude more complex than most other industries. This complexity has generated extensive clinical specialization. In some cases this specialization calls for extensive changes to the “normal” health IT workflow. It also means that each medical specialization has its own diagnostic categories, terminology, and procedures.

Meaningful use allows for an unprecedented marriage of practice management and clinical data, with much better accuracy and depth than in the past. A lot of basic questions in healthcare management that have remained largely unanswered can now be resolved in a straightforward manner. Examples where we are eager to start seeing high-quality data inc

Within a site, a numeric or alphanumeric identifier is assigned and in the case of paper records is applied with stickers to the paper folder containing the record documents. This identifier is typically called the medical record number (MRN). For organizations with multiple locations or departments it isn’t uncommon for a single patient to be assi

Often several copies and

There are at least two examples of health IT approaches that certainly count as electronic, but do not qualify as an EHR as per meaningful use. The first is simply a collection of word processing documents.

Once completed, the superbill ends up with the billing department, where its information is entered into an electronic system. A system used specifically for billing is often known as a practice management system. Some vendors offer a combined EHR and practice management system.

even if you are), you will be asked to sign what is known as a Business Associate Agreement, which will spell out clearly that all data you receive from the covered entity is HIPAA-covered.