Friday,
August 22, 2003
Vol. 6, No. 67
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Solve all of your biggest challenges—AUDITING, KICKBACKS, STARK, HIPAA,TRAINING, AND MEASURING EFFECTIVENESS with reporters who get the stories and ideas you need to comply and help your organization's bottom line!
"Strategies for Health Care Compliance," a 12-page monthly newsletter, helps you thrive in the ever-changing compliance environment by providing easy-to-understand compliance advice and analysis of the latest regulations. Each month, this newsletter offers how-to tips, features about your peers, policies and procedures, and tools for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of your corporate compliance programs. To learn more, click here or
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On Complianceinfo.com
Sample compliance policies and procedures. (For subscribers to Strategies for Health Care Compliance only)
Sample audit programs. (For subscribers to Health Care Auditing Strategies only)
The OIG Work Plan for Fiscal Year 2003
Ask the Expert
Compliance Hot Topics: Billing and Coding, EMTALA, Stark, HIPAA
Question of the Week
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Welcome to Compliance Monitor Q&A!
Our mission is to answer your difficult compliance questions—and your simple ones, too. To submit a question, send it to Compliance Monitor Q & A editor Melissa Osborn at mosborn@hcpro.com.
We hope you enjoy this service and we welcome your feedback.
This week's questions
Pay-per-view article
Quick survey
Questions and Answers
Can we raffle donated tickets?
Q:
A law firm has offered to give our organization tickets to a sporting event. We can use these tickets to raise money for a charity or give the tickets to developmentally disabled children. Is this a conflict of interest? Does it violate the Stark regulations in any way?
A:
If you plan to raffle off the tickets to raise money, then this is a legitimate charitable activity. Check your state's "gaming" laws, however, to make sure they permit this practice. Your plan does not appear to raise a conflict of interest, either, and it certainly does not violate the Stark law; Stark applies only to physicians who refer patients for certain procedures to entities in which they have a financial interest.
My one possible concern with this arrangement relates to the anti-kickback laws (both federal and state). Because legal fees are reimbursable costs, and since the law firm may be giving your organization tickets with the intent to receive return business, the donation might be problematic. The government may suspect an intent to solicit a kickback if the value of the tickets is large: tickets to a major league baseball game would not be particularly significant, but tickets to more expensive events, like The Masters golf tournament, the Indianapolis 500, or Wimbledon's tennis championship, might raise eyebrows. The number of tickets and the frequency of their donation are also factors. You must consider each case based on its own facts.
This question was answered by Stuart Showalter, JD, MFS, director of compliance for Orlando Regional Healthcare System.
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MINIMIZE SURVEY RISKS WITH ONLINE REPORTS
For the first time ever, arm yourself with the same information that surveyors have about your nursing home (or others)-months before they walk in the door. Get the low-cost, easy-to-understand Deficiency and Resident Census and Condition Report.
Use this great new tool to protect your facility from lawsuits, keep insurance premiums down, and find survey weaknesses. Get instant online access to your publicly reported OSCAR data, pattern of deficiencies, complaint history, and Life Safety Code compliance. Click here to order or to get a FREE sample report or call toll-free at 1 (800) 765-8998, and mention "HCPro."
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JOIN THE COMPLIANCE MONITOR TEAM!
Are you a compliance expert? We're looking for compliance experts in coding, billing, documentation, HIPAA, EMTALA, Stark, laboratories, and many other areas of compliance. If you are interested in answering questions from your peers, please e-mail Compliance Monitor editor Melissa Osborn.
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Pay-Per-View article:
Rehab: Marketing audits help find hidden money
A marketing audit allows rehabilitation providers to maximize the amount of money they receive from new patients and take stock of competitors. Marketing audits show you where your marketing dollars are going and whether they are working for you. After these audits, you ought to be able to spot holes in your practice where you've wasted marketing money, and then create a plan to fill them.
To find out how to perform a marketing audit, order the pay-per-view article "Rehab: Marketing audits help find hidden money." The cost is $10. Subscribers to the online version of Health Care Auditing Strategies have free access to this article. Subscribers to the print edition can find it in their August issues.
A $30 steal!
You can read this article-and much more-in the August issue of Health Care Auditing Strategies. Your cost: Five stories for only $30! You'll also learn how to audit observation services, how to perform a marketing audit, how to assess your clinical trials, and how to use aggressive mammography audits to boost detection and cancer analysis.
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Here's an audioconference that explains the challenges of clinical trials informed consent
In today's fast-evolving regulatory climate, investigators, research staff, sponsors, and patients considering involvement in clinical trials face a multitude of real and perceived challenges. The act of balancing regulatory compliance, institutional review board expectations, and subjects' right to informed participation is difficult at best.
Join us for "The Challenge of Informed Consent in Clinical Trials: Practical Examples and Expert Advice" on Thursday, September 4 beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern. You'll learn to identify the particular challenges in informed consent and to work positively and prospectively with your IRB to manage those concerns.
To learn more or to register, click here or call our customer service department at 800/650-6787. Be sure to mention source code EZ1663D.
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Are students considered business associates?
Q:
Should a home care agency get a business associate (BA) agreement with schools and/or universities that it has clinical rotation programs with? These students make joint home visits with our employees, but they do not provide treatment to our patients. However, they have access to protected health information.
A: To read the answer to this question, click here.
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Quick survey:
Does your organization train employees on Medicaid compliance issues?
To submit your answer, go to the Question of the Week at
Complianceinfo.com.
Here are the answers to the last survey:
When will your organization begin auditing its HIPAA compliance program?
- Within the next six months: 68%
- In 7-12 months: 17%
- In 12+ months: 9%
- We do not plan to audit: 6%
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Network with your audit colleagues
"Audit Talk" is a new, moderated chat forum that members can use to post messages or questions for their peers 24-hours-a-day. "Audit Talk" offers a free forum to network, share ideas, and solve problems for those in the audit industry. Getting involved is easy. To subscribe, just send your request to this e-mail: owner-audit_talk@hcpro.com.
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Share the news!
You've been benefiting from our informative
e-mail newsletter, so why not pass on this resource to your peers? Sign up a colleague and get $20 off your next purchase on HCPro's Healthcare Marketplace!
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Send your comments and questions about Compliance Monitor Q&A to:
Melissa Osborn
Managing Editor
mosborn@hcpro.com
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