Verisma ‘Spotlight’ Helps Clients Proactively Manage High-risk Medical Record Requests

Oct 4, 2017 | Uncategorized

New solution flags predefined patients, transactions early in disclosure management workflow to help organizations manage high-risk requests efficiently and effectively

ALEXANDRIA, VA. – Oct. 4, 2017 – Verisma Systems, Inc., announced the launch of a new product, Spotlight, designed to help clients respond effectively to requests for protected health information that might pose a risk to their organizations.

Disclosure management is a sensitive process under any circumstance. But specific requestors or transactions – such as court-ordered subpoenas, VIP requests, and those made by irate patients or families engaged in child custody proceedings – may carry additional risk. Spotlight utilizes organization-determined rules and conditions to automatically flag these requests, alerting appropriate staff and triggering cross-departmental checklists to ensure the requests are processed correctly.

“Health information management leaders tell us 90% of the sleep they lose can be traced back to a mere 10% of the requests their teams handle,” says Marty McKenna, CEO of Verisma. “We’ve designed Spotlight to virtually eliminate those sleepless nights. We identify potentially risky requests almost as soon as they are made so they can be handled appropriately before it’s too late.”

Spotlight automatically identifies requests based on criteria such as specific request reasons, requestors and days-until-date-due. Flags may also be activated manually. Leaders can add an editable protocol checklist, which documents steps completed and by whom, with a date/time stamp. Spotlight auto-generates management reports of all flagged transactions, and integrates with Verisma’s User Tasks & Notification feature to ensure all appropriate personnel are aware and involved.

Phase 1 deployment of Verisma Spotlight will focus on two categories of high-risk disclosure management clients have identified as their greatest challenges:

1. Court-ordered subpoenas for information, which often represent tight turnaround times where lack of compliance could result in contempt-of-court charges and associated penalties;
2. Attorneys who have become known as “high maintenance,” and require special attention to avoid disruption in normal workflow or threat of a lawsuit.

“Every HIM director I know struggles with these high-risk requests,” says Linda Kloss, MA, RHIA, FAHIMA, president of Kloss Strategic Advisors and former CEO of AHIMA. “If we don’t identify them early enough in the process, they create a lot of headaches and can damage the organization. A tool to help us get ahead of these requests is worth its weight in gold.”

About Verisma

Verisma is a health information technology provider focused on delivering unparalleled Disclosure Management solutions to the healthcare industry. The company’s flagship automation system, Verisma® Release Manager (VRM), is utilized by well-known healthcare organizations nationwide. VRM automates workflow to improve turnaround times, reduce errors and drive down costs – effectively automating medical records release while delivering comprehensive release audit capabilities. It is the only release technology with integrated HIPAA guidance and compliance review support. For additional information, please visit our website at www.verisma.com, call 866-390-7404 or email solutions@verisma.com.

Media Contact:

Elizabeth Glaser

Phone (770) 317-8831

Elizabeth@verisma.com

WEBINAR: Best Practices in Ambulatory Release of Information

Sep 7, 2017 | Uncategorized

Date: September 27^th, 2017, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm EST  

Presenters:

Linda Kloss, MA, RHIA, President, Kloss Strategic Advisors, Inc.

Julia Applegate, Vice President of Client Operations, Verisma

People are indeed becoming empowered health consumers and more patients are seeking access to their medical records.  Medical Practices are handling more requests, but may not be in compliance with current regulations—and may not be meeting the needs of their patients. Medical practices should assess and upgrade policies and procedures for Release of Information (ROI) practices to improve both the quality of service to patients and other requestors and reduce compliance risk.  The demands have increased and so have the risks.

This webinar focuses on the legal, compliance and business rationale for improving ROI in the ambulatory setting.  Taking an end-to-end workflow view, best practices drawn from actual medical practices will be highlighted.  Practical assessment criteria will be provided to guide practice managers, corporate and ambulatory HIM managers, privacy and compliance officers in assessing current procedures. For practices that are part of a health system, examples will highlight the trend toward standardizing ROI across the enterprise and how they are achieving this goal.

Presenters will engage attendees in considering requirements and best practices for ambulatory release of protected health information. Julia Applegate, Vice President of Client Operations at Verisma an acknowledged expert on best ROI practices will draw upon her years of experience helping hundreds of health care organizations to improve the efficiency, quality, and compliance of ROI.  Linda Kloss, President of Kloss Strategic Advisors, Inc. a health care information privacy and governance educator and thought leader, will provide a holistic way of organizing and managing protected health information in light of the growing demand and changing technology and risks.

Designed for managers of medical practices and HIM, this webinar will address the following learning goals:

• Review current regulations and guidance on patient access and Release of Information
• Examine the workflow for Release of Information and key best practices throughout the process
• Identify points of vulnerability from the perspectives of customer service, compliance and cost effectiveness
• Review metrics for ROI efficiency and accuracy
• Consider the need and benefits for standardizing ROI practices across a health system and viable processes for achieving greater standardization

Approved for 1 AHIMA CEU Credit: Privacy and Security

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ROI Process Variation Across a Health System is Costly & Risky

Aug 16, 2017 | Uncategorized

Reduce ROI Cost and Risk Through Sound Workflow Design and Consistent Execution

Exploring Driver #2 & #3 of the “5 Things You Must Know Now About Release of Health Information”

By: Linda Kloss, MA, RHIA, FAHIMA

Increasing productivity is a central goal in today’s health care world. Increasing productivity involves improving output “task” time, speeding up. This is an important element, but for nearly all types of healthcare operations, productivity represents much more than speeding up. It’s not just how many records are coded per hour, it’s records coded per hour, while achieving accuracy benchmarks based on the type of record.  Similarly, it’s not just volume of transcription output, but line or document output adjusted for error volume and value.

Healthcare organizations are embracing lean techniques to optimize clinical and administrative processes and six sigma techniques to reduce process variation and process defects. How should we describe and measure productivity for release and disclosure of health information? What are the essential workflow elements that should be considered in lean process design?  What defects must be eliminated and measured?

Work process design involves six steps:  Mapping the process, analyzing it, redesigning, acquiring resources, implementing and communicating change, and measuring elements of the process for continuous improvement. In mapping, analyzing and redesigning a process, look for and eliminate as much of the delay as possible—for the benefit of patients, other customers and those who manage the release processes. Delays can be breaks in the process for rework such as logging a request, retrieving records called for in the request, producing output, and billing the requestor. Delays may also be gaps between steps in the process, the handoffs that so often have negative impact on productivity.  Rework and delays may also require seeking clarification to resolve uncertainty about the specifics of the request or the federal and state laws and regulations or organizational policies that guide how to fulfill them.

Verisma is transforming disclosure management by helping hospitals and clinics reduce process variation through an end-to-end technology-guided process-oriented approach.  Verisma deploys user-friendly, yet sophisticated workflow tools to guide each step of the process while reducing delays with built-in compliance guidance.  It automates the work of ongoing monitoring and process evaluating and it preserves a full record of work performed for compliance and transparency. When aggregated over time, the improved productivity based on reduced task time translates directly into tangible cost savings and intangible compliance risk avoidance.

The crux of productivity for disclosure management functions is aligning capabilities (technology and workflow tools) to well designed and executed processes performed by qualified staff and/or outsource partner, that are grounded in delivering value to customers and complying with regulations and policies. Measurements must take into account all elements for ongoing performance improvement.

Reducing ROI cost and risk through sound workflow design and execution should challenge HIM managers to consider the following:

1. What are the steps in the end-to-end process? Where are the delays and breaks occurring and what are their root causes?
2. Do we understand the customer value proposition for patient access? Are our processes optimized to deliver on them?
3. Do our performance measures take in the capabilities, execution and outputs? How are they being used for ongoing improvement?

In our upcoming post, we will explore Driver #3 Enterprise Standardization Reduces Cost and Mitigates Risk of the “5 Things You Must Know Now About Release of Health Information.” As always, we encourage you to share your thoughts with us at solutions@verisma.com.

ROI Volume and Complexity is on the Rise

Jul 25, 2017 | Uncategorized

Exploring Driver #1 of the “5 Things You Must Know Now About Release of Health Information”

By: Linda Kloss, MA, RHIA, FAHIMA

Healthcare systems are reporting a 40+% increase in the volume of requests for protected health information in the first half of 2017 as compared to the same timeframe in 2016.  This is a 40+% increase over already high volumes of requests from a growing list of requesters.  Volumes will continue to increase particularly as patients are becoming more involved in their health and understand that they can and should have current versions of their health records.

The process for fulfilling requests has also changed very dramatically over recent years as EHRs have largely replaced paper records. For decades, HIM referred to the function of disclosing confidential patient information as “release of information” or R-O-I (too often requiring differentiation from the more commonly understood ROI, return on investment). A more precise and contemporary term is “disclosure” defined under HIPAA as the release, transfer, provision of access to, or divulging in any other manner of information outside the entity holding the information. While HITECH did not change this definition, it does change the accounting of such disclosures for organizations using an electronic health record, which now includes most healthcare organizations.

Verisma is leading the way in approaching R-O-I as disclosure management because this is what it must be in the world of electronic information; a different ball game than release of paper documents.  In the R-O-I world, we thought in terms of pages of information.  Pages were the basis for calculating the work effort and per page fees were hotly contested by state legislatures as interested parties sought to keep per page fees down while hospitals sought fair reimbursement.  Those days are long gone.

In a typical EHR, the effort associated with producing an export for disclosure includes the effort required to determine the parameters of the information to be disclosed, apply the minimum necessary standard when applicable, ensure that there are no restrictions on the information’s release that requires additional permissions, identify source systems for the requested information, compile the extract, and produce the information in the format that is usable by the patient or other requester.

By any measure, electronic disclosure management represents a step up in complexity and requisite skills when compared to the old record copy days.  This is particularly true as patients and others request longitudinal information and the volume and complexity of health information itself in electronic records continues to expand.

Volume and complexity is one of five drivers transforming health information disclosure management.  With regard to this driver, healthcare organizations should consider the following:

1. Do we know enough about how the types, volume and content of requests are changing?
2. How well is the process for creating extractions from the electronic record understood and standardized?
3. Do we understand the compliance pitfalls and have audit trails for Business Associates providing support for disclosure management?

In our next post, discussion will center around Drivers #2 ROI Process Variation Across a Health System is Costly and #3 ROI Process Variation is Risky of the “5 Things You Must Know Now About Release of Health Information.” We welcome you to share your comments and questions with us at solutions@verisma.com.