Nursing

HEALTHCARE TRAINING WEEKLY
Friday, January 3, 2003
Volume 2, Number 1

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, January 24, 2003

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IN THIS ISSUE

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1. Columbia U settles billing lawsuit
2. Alert system offers real-time training: VA
3. Fire safety: Not JUST a false alarm
4. Pay-per-view article: 'Provide job-specific training'

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IN THE NEWS

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1. COLUMBIA U SETTLES BILLING LAWSUIT

A federal lawsuit alleging that doctors with New York's Columbia University billed Medicaid for services they did not provide came to a close on December 20, when the school agreed to pay the government $5.1 million and provide billing training to its employees for five years. Federal prosecutors charged that Medicaid-eligible physicians at Columbia had billed New York State's Medicaid program for services provided by ineligible doctors, midwives, and other practitioners. The government's inquiry began in May 2000, when a former billing employee made investigators aware of problems with the institution's Medicaid claims.

The settlement was reached in November in the federal district court for the southern district of New York. Contact the court at (212) 637-2200.

2. ALERT SYSTEM OFFERS REAL-TIME TRAINING: VA

Clinicians at the Veterans Administration (VA) Pittsburgh Healthcare System say computerized patient records have improved their ability to provide preventive care. The system enables them to order laboratory, radiology, and pharmacy services as they see patients. Writing in the December issue of Health Management Technology, Robert Calabrisi, DSC, and colleagues said the way that they set up the VA's automated alert program also enabled clinicians to receive training on how to use the new system during patient visits.

The VA's Windows-based system supplies caregivers with all the information they need to order screenings, vaccinations, or other types of preventive measures to patients at the point of care. It replaces a paper-based approach plagued with problems like illegible handwriting and lost or misfiled documents.

Contact Calabrisi at robert.calabrisi@med.va.gov. Contact co-author Tammy Czarnecki at tammy.czarnecki@med.va.gov.

3. FIRE SAFETY: NOT JUST A FALSE ALARM

False alarms during fire drills should give fire safety officers an opportunity to go beyond required accreditation expectations, says Dave Lambert, CHSP, safety officer and public safety manager at Chandler (AZ) Regional Hospital-Catholic Healthcare West. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations lets you count false alarms as 50% of your fire drills, so you've got a lot to work with, he says. "You've always got something going on: minor construction, minor remodeling, [or] stuff that doesn't involve interim life safety measures," Lambert says.

The preceding excerpt comes from the HCPro special report, "Successful strategies for better fire drills." To order, or for more information, call our Customer Service department at 800/650-6787, or click here: http://www.hcmarketplace.com/Prod.cfm?id=1197&s=ehtw

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4. PAY-PER-VIEW ARTICLE

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HIPAA

'Provide job-specific training'

As you train employees to comply with the privacy rule of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), document your work and keep records for six years, says Jill Callahan Dennis, JD, RHIA, principal of the consulting firm Health Risk Advantage, in Denver. Solicit the help of people at all levels of your organization when structuring your training program. They may help you answer these critical questions:

-- Who is part of the workforce?
-- What do they need to know in order to do their jobs?
-- How will you document your training?
-- What's a reasonable period of time to train new employees?
-- Who will retain the training documentation?
-- Who will decide when retraining is needed?

Editor's note: Watch for future issues of Strategies for HealthCare Compliance (SHCC) for more on meeting HIPAA's privacy training requirements.

To read the full story, go to http://www.hcpro.com/onlinepubs/article.cfm?article=25300
The cost is $10. Subscribers to the online version of Strategies for Health Care Compliance (SHCC) have free access to this article. Subscribers to the print newsletter version of SHCC can find this article in their January 2003 issues.

For the cost of just three stories, you can get the entire January 2003 issue of SHCC! You'll find stories on New Year's compliance resolutions, the Office of Inspector General's 2003 Work Plan, and hospital-physician financial relationships. Go to http://www.hcpro.com/onlinepubs/article.cfm?article=25301 to choose between the PDF and HTML version for just $30. SHCC online subscribers have free access to this issue, and print newsletter subscribers can find this issue in their mailboxes.



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