The Compliance Insider 

Provider groups have slammed the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services after the agency issued a final rule that would reduce Medicare payments to skilled nursing facilities by $3.87 billion for the fiscal... Continue Reading

Q: In-home healthcare who is responsible for purchasing gloves-employer, employee, or patient? If the employer, can the employer put a limit on the number of gloves per month? A: If you are an employee of a home... Continue Reading

CMS issues the Advance Beneficiary Notice of Non-coverage (ABN) for you to use to notify your Medicare patients when you believe an item or service may not be covered. This form has been updated and changed several... Continue Reading

HIPAA compliance auditors contracted by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) will review whether covered entities have corrective action plans in place and if they diligently work to remediate any problems. Below... Continue Reading

As of Aug. 22, 2011, there have been 306 major health information breaches, which have affected a total of almost 11.7 million individuals included in the official federal tally. Fourteen incidents affecting a... Continue Reading

Under HIPAA Privacy and as outlined on your NPP, the patient has many rights. One of these is the right to request an accounting of all non-TPO disclosures (any disclosure that is not for treatment, payment, or... Continue Reading

Needlesticks have been ranked as eighth on the list of Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2011. The number of reports is staggering even with the emphasis on training and prevention during the past 20... Continue Reading

Under the in-office ancillary exception to the Stark Law, if you refer a patient for MRI, CT, or PET scans offered by your practice, you provide notice to the patient of alternative area suppliers for the imaging... Continue Reading

All complaints of sexual or other harassment must be investigated. However, the extent and method of the investigation may vary from complaint to complaint, just as the nature of each complaint may vary. The... Continue Reading

Doctors who failed to do a minimum amount of electronic prescribing in the first half of 2011 will lose 1 percent of their Medicare reimbursement in 2012 if they do not qualify for an exemption. Under new proposed... Continue Reading