Patient Verification Helps Hospitals Deal with Decreasing Revenue as COVID-19 Cases Rise

August 31, 2021/7578 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, COVID-19, Data Integrity, Duplicate Medical Records, EHR, healthcare, Medical Record Mix-ups, Patient Errors, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

Hospitals and health systems are constantly being challenged by the pandemic. Sure, COVID-19 has affected virtually every business – many organizations have declared bankruptcy while others have shuttered their doors. However, most, if not all of these organizations, had their employees work from home. Healthcare providers, on the other hand, had to face unprecedented challenges head-on, such as frontline healthcare teams risking their lives, losing billions of dollars, patient verification issues, data breaches, and more.

Unfortunately, it looks like the battle with COVID-19 is far from over for healthcare providers. With the Delta variant once again wreaking havoc, caregivers are experiencing razor-thin margins. That being said, accurate patient verification CAN prevent many issues, helping hospitals survive this challenging period. Let’s take a look at a few stats that show how concerning the new variant is and how positive patient identification can help caregivers.

Some recent statistics that show a rise in margins and expenses

While things were definitely getting better with millions being vaccinated across the U.S. and businesses slowly opening up, the Delta variant of COVID-19 has struck back with full force. While healthcare providers have been facing lower losses and improved margins when compared to the first half of 2020, a new report sheds light on many facts. While many indicators show that things are going in the right direction, some show that the effects of COVID-19 are far from over.

The “median operating margin index” in June was 2.8%, excluding funding from the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relied, and Economic Security) Act. When taking funding into account, it was 4.3%.

What do these numbers mean for hospitals and health systems? Well, it’s an increase of almost 90% (excluding CARES Act Funding) or 48.7% (including the funding) when compared to the first half of 2020. All of these numbers are based on 900 hospitals that have participated monthly for the last three years.

When it comes to patient volumes, it’s a mixed bag. Patient volumes were higher when compared to 2020, but lower than they were before the pandemic. For those who want specifics, discharges between January and June of 2021 were 10.1% higher than in the first half of 2020, but when compared to the first half of 2019, patient volumes are down 4.4%. A similar trend can be seen for ER visits in hospitals, i.e. higher than in the first half of 2020 but lower than in the first half of 2019.

Fortunately, the revenue of hospitals and health systems has increased compared to both 2020 and 2019! According to the same report mentioned above, this is because of outpatient visits. “Gross operating revenue,” excluding CARES Act funding for January to June of this year, was 18.2% higher than the same period of 2020 and 7.9% higher than the same period of 2019.

But all of these statistics look good for hospitals, right?

Well, while all of these do look good, expenses have also increased – affecting margins significantly. The first half of 2021 saw an 8.5% rise in expenses when compared to the first half of last year, and an increase of almost 10% when compared to the first half of 2019.

While margins are increasing, expenses are increasing as well

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over – the Delta variant has reached the U.S. and has been in the news for the past few weeks. While healthcare providers have opened their doors to regular patients, COVID-19 cases are spiking once again, and this might be detrimental to hospital margins according to an official associated with the study mentioned above.

Hospitals need to identify ways to reduce losses, improve patient safety, and avoid unwanted incidents that hurt the bottom line. But how can patient verification help?

How patient verification helps improve hospital margins

Accurate patient identification has been a topic of discussion for several years now, and identification errors have also given rise to a number of studies.

Accurate patient identification helps

Prevent medical record errors such as duplicate medical records and overlays
Prevent medical identity theft in real-time
Protect patient data integrity
Reduce denied claims by ensuring accurate, consistent information within medical records
Prevent medical errors that might lead to patient safety incidents
Avoid dangerous patient mix-ups, including transplant mix-ups
Ensure CMS compliance by sending out proper e-notifications to appropriate caregivers
Improve patient outcomes
Reduce hospital readmissions

All of the above, when considered together, can drastically reduce losses and improve a hospital’s margin. We know this because our leading patient identification platform has been helping several healthcare providers for years.

Patient verification made easy with RightPatient

A number of healthcare providers have chosen RightPatient to manage their patients’ medical records. In a post-pandemic world, RightPatient’s touchless patient ID platform makes the most sense, as it keeps everyone safe by preventing physical contact (when compared to other methods of identification).

RightPatient reduces denied claims, improves patient safety, prevents duplicates and overlays, and prevents patient identity theft – boosting the bottom line of hospitals.

How are YOU planning to reduce losses and improve margins at your healthcare facility?

How to Protect Patient Information as Data Breaches Become a Topmost Concern

August 25, 2021/6604 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Cybersecurity, Data Breach, Data Integrity, healthcare, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Data, Patient Identification, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

We’ve talked about data breaches in hospitals and health systems more times than we can count. Unfortunately, these unwanted incidents just keep on happening, and even when the pandemic was at its peak, hackers didn’t stop. Thus, it isn’t a surprise that many healthcare executives are wary about cyberthreats that loom in the dark, just biding their time and waiting to attack more hospitals and steal patient information. That being said, let’s take a look at some recent cyberthreats faced by hospitals, what healthcare execs are saying, and how to protect patient information even if there is a data breach.

Most healthcare experts are worried about cyber threats

Let’s take a look at some of the recent worrying trends in health IT, according to some respected healthcare executives.

Half of them stated that the frequency of cyber-attacks on healthcare facilities is one of their primary concerns now – let’s explore the issue in detail.

Out of these execs, one of them expects that this will continue to be a huge problem for the foreseeable future – a worrying but accurate prediction, unfortunately.

Another exec stated that such cyber-attacks put patient data, arguably one of the most sensitive pieces of information available within hospitals, at huge risk. We’re inclined to agree, as most data breaches end up with hackers stealing patient information and selling it to fraudsters who commit medical identity theft down the line. Many caregivers, as a result, are searching for answers to the billion-dollar question – how to protect patient information.

Another exec stated that cyberattacks are rapidly evolving as hackers come up with innovative ways to attack and lock or steal patient information – something quite challenging to keep up with.

One of the execs that is worried about cyber-attacks stated that hackers and these issues hinder them from doing their jobs properly, which is to care for their patients. He also stated that effective cybersecurity practices and far more assistance are required to tackle cybersecurity and keep costs in check.

Another of these execs predicts that more hospitals and health systems will be focused on improving some aspects such as better integration between platforms, patient consumerization, and strategies that help with cybersecurity efforts.

However, not all healthcare executives chose cyber-attacks as their primary worries.

Others chose:

The boom of startups that give unrealistic expectations, taking up a lot of money from investors.
Mergers and acquisitions.
Mandates about sharing health information that are quite unclear and might be detrimental.
Clinician burnout due to EHR coding, among other issues.
Ensuring equity during telehealth visits.

While all of them are quite valid concerns, the biggest concern is how to protect patient information effectively – healthcare data breaches are occurring as we speak.

Hospitals must protect patient information effectively as data breaches are rampant

On the 15th of April, a phishing attempt was successful – unauthorized individual(s) got access to login credentials of an employee of Orlando Family Physicians. After a thorough investigation, it was found that three other employee accounts were accessed. While the access has been revoked, over 447,000 patients were exposed, such as names, health insurance data, Social Security numbers, and more. This is just a classic case of data breaches – something that has been repeating itself for several years in many hospitals and health systems.

Fortunately, as we mentioned at the beginning of the article, doing something about protecting patient data and preventing medical identity theft IS possible – let’s see how to protect patient information even if there is a data breach.

How to protect patient information with RightPatient

RightPatient is the leading touchless patient identification platform trusted by responsible hospitals and health systems for several reasons. Firstly, it ensures accurate patient identification starting from appointment scheduling and at any touchpoint across the care continuum. Secondly, it is easy-to-use, safe, and hygienic, as the interactions are contactless – something that is extremely valuable in a post-pandemic world. Thirdly, it protects patient data and blocks fraudsters during identity verification – preventing medical identity theft in real-time.

During the registration process, the patient just needs to look at the camera – the photo taken is attached to their medical record, essentially “locking” it from being meddled with by fraudsters. When the patient returns for future visits, all the patient needs to do is look at the camera – RightPatient automatically runs a search and presents the appropriate EHR when it finds a match between the saved photo and the patient’s live image. Any fraudster attempts will be red-flagged by RightPatient during this process – stopping medical identity theft in its tracks.

How are YOU protecting your patients’ information?

Denied Medical Claims Are Costly but Preventable with Patient Identification

August 23, 2021/6839 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, Denied Claims, Duplicate Medical Records, EHR, healthcare, Patient Data, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

The U.S. healthcare system is no stranger to problems, unfortunately. In fact, it has been plagued by a plethora of issues for several years. While some of the problems are definitely solvable, external issues alongside other factors cause the problems to continue. Some of the many problems are astronomical prices, the lack of price transparency, interoperability issues, the abundance of data breaches, medical identity theft, and patient safety issues. While we have covered some of these topics at one point or the other, let’s take a look at another crucial problem, denied medical claims, how they are problematic for everyone, and how positive patient identification can prevent them.

Denied medical claims are costly and cumbersome for everyone involved

Denied claims are not a recent problem within U.S. healthcare – most hospitals and health systems are quite familiar with them. One can safely say that denied medical claims are quite expensive – an average hospital can lose around $3.5 million due to them. However, denied claims not only affect hospitals but also insurers and patients, albeit in different ways – let’s see how.

Claim denials in a nutshell

In the U.S., healthcare is closely related to reimbursements from Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial insurers. Patients get health insurance, go to their healthcare provider, get treated, and that’s about it. However, a lot more goes on behind the scenes regarding healthcare reimbursements.

After providing healthcare services to the patients, the hospital processes the information and sends the claims to the insurance company. While healthcare providers usually get reimbursed by the payer, some of them face expensive hiccups. Due to billing or coding issues, patient identification errors, medical record mix-ups, or other problems, the payer identifies inconsistencies after receiving claims, and they might reject or deny said claims. While some claims can be resubmitted, checking for and fixing the errors is time-consuming, costly, and requires a considerable number of resources.

All of the above leads to back-and-forth exchanges between care providers and payers. Insurers have to reject claims, caregivers lose out on a significant amount of revenue, and many patients even receive shocking, incorrect bills. However, some even lose healthcare services, especially those associated with Medicaid.

Let’s take a look at a few statistics to see how Medicaid patients suffer due to denied medical claims. However, do keep in mind that denied claims can be detrimental for any patient.

A worrying study regarding denied claims

A very recent study has shed light on denied claims and how physicians or hospitals are reluctant to see Medicaid patients due to reimbursement issues.

According to the study, at least 25% of Medicaid claims have been denied upon initial submission. On the other hand, 7.3% of Medicare claims were denied whereas commercial insurers denied 4.8%.

Moreover, the study also states that around 17% of revenue is lost due to billing problems associated with Medicaid patients, whereas the numbers are quite lower for patients covered by Medicare (5%) and other payers (3%).

While any type of denied claim is extremely costly, the statistics show that the Medicaid ones are quite problematic. Moreover, since Medicaid is associated with low-income families, reimbursements are lower as well.

All of this just leads to caregivers being reluctant to look after Medicaid patients.

Denied medical claims are preventable

One of the topmost priorities of physicians and healthcare providers is to look after the patients, Medicare or otherwise. Instead of worrying about denied claims, hospitals and health systems can work on reducing or eliminating them with the right tools and strategies.

Fortunately, RightPatient, the industry’s leading touchless biometric patient identification platform, can help reduce denied claims substantially.

Denied and rejected claims typically occur because of billing and coding errors – most of which can be traced back to medical record errors, patient mix-ups, and identification issues. RightPatient eliminates all of that, and more, as it ensures that the accurate information is fed to the correct EHR at all times. As a result, billing and coding errors are drastically reduced and so are denied claims – boosting the bottom line.

How are YOU reducing denied claims in your healthcare facility?

The Importance of EHRs Shows Why Medical Record Errors Must be Prevented

July 30, 2021/7653 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, EHR, healthcare, Medical Record Mix-ups, Patient Data, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

When caregivers are asked about the most important tool they have at their disposal to treat their patients, what answers are expected? Some would say their healthcare team, the cutting edge technology/procedures they have access to, the different solutions they have that improve healthcare outcomes, and so on. However, the most underrated and crucial tool is definitely the electronic health records or EHRs. Think of it – where would healthcare be without EHRs? EHRs ensure that the right information regarding the right patient is provided to the right medical team. However, this is applicable only as long as certain issues are prevented, especially medical record errors.

That being said, let’s take a deeper dive into how EHRs are the most important tool for healthcare providers and why ensuring patient data integrity is a must.

Healthcare is evolving but the starting point remains the same

Let’s go back to a time before the deadly pandemic. If someone went to a healthcare provider and told them that telehealth would become mainstream in the future, the provider would most likely say that they’re crazy! Look at the reality now – telehealth is still preferred by many, even while users are decreasing due to hospitals opening up.

Healthcare has been evolving – rapidly in some areas and steadily in others. One certain thing is that healthcare isn’t limited to the four walls of hospitals and health systems anymore – one of the consequences of the pandemic. However, whether it’s in-person visits or virtual ones (telehealth/telemedicine), the foundation for providing care to patients remains the same – EHRs.

EHRs are more important than most realize

Patients, caregivers, and others are quite satisfied with telehealth now.

Patients on the younger side have stated that they would like to continue using telehealth even if the national health emergency is over. That’s probably because it’s more convenient, easier, and safer – all the patients need is an internet connection with a communication device.

Caregivers have a bit more complex process to go through.

Caregivers who are providing telehealth services have to consider a lot of factors – the telehealth platform, the portal, the EHR system, identifying the right patient, rules and regulations, ensuring patient safety online, and more. Also, while providing virtual services to the patients, the physicians need to ensure that the necessary information is being fed to the EHRs of the patients accurately – just as they do during an in-person visit.

The bottom line is that whether the healthcare provider is seeing the patient within their facility or online, the one thing that basically remains constant is the patient’s EHR. However, issues such as medical record errors can mess EHRs up, derailing healthcare outcomes among other things – let’s see how.

Why it’s crucial to prevent medical record errors

One of the starting points of providing healthcare is the EHR. When the patient interacts with their healthcare provider, usually to schedule an appointment, one of the first things done by the caregiver is pulling up the patient’s EHR. It basically provides the entire medical history, recent lab test results, and other information required to treat the patient. Moreover, any new information captured by the caregiver will be added to the EHR. EHRs, by providing timely, relevant, comprehensive, and accurate information to the physicians, improve healthcare outcomes, optimize healthcare delivery, boost coordinated care, and reduce adverse events.

Now, imagine if an inaccurate EHR is selected – the consequences can be devastating!

Medical record errors such as duplicates and overlays lead to patient mix-ups. Patient A’s treatment will be based on patient B’s medical record, leading to detrimental healthcare outcomes, adverse effects, and worse. Patient data within the EHRs becomes unreliable as it is fragmented, erroneous, and inconsistent.

However, all of this can be prevented with positive patient identification with RightPatient.

RightPatient prevents medical record errors – and more!

By identifying patients correctly right off the bat, RightPatient ensures that accurate, high-quality data is fed to the EHRs every time the patient checks in for a healthcare visit. Patients only need to look at the camera – the touchless biometric patient identification platform does the rest.

With RightPatient, responsible healthcare providers are not only ensuring patient data integrity, but they are also improving patient outcomes, preventing patient safety incidents, and providing optimal healthcare services to patients.

Ensuring Healthcare Data Quality Boosts Hospitals’ Digital Transformation Efforts

July 23, 2021/6563 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, EHR, healthcare, Patient Data, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

The U.S. healthcare system has always had a complex relationship with technology, to say the least. While it has always been open to ideas that can transform healthcare, there have been certain impediments. For instance, the concept of a unique patient identifier is around two decades old, but due to many concerns, one doesn’t exist yet. As a result, healthcare providers are either struggling with patient identification errors or are using a robust patient identification platform to resolve the issues. Moreover, new research demonstrates the complex relationship between healthcare and technology – healthcare is lagging behind other industries in terms of digital transformation. Let’s take a closer look at the study, why some are reluctant to pursue digital transformation, and how ensuring healthcare data quality can boost digital transformation, among other things.

Some stats regarding digital transformation

The study was conducted with over 300 C-level executives, and while it includes a variety of industries, it also compares healthcare with the others, providing a different perspective.

Overall, a whopping 82% of the respondents from all industries stated that data quality is a barrier to data integration. This falls in line with the problems faced in U.S. hospitals and health systems – healthcare data quality can be inconsistent and problematic.

Healthcare was found to be comparable to financial services and the telecommunications industry in digital transformation – most of the respondents from these organizations stated that they were witnessing success rates of around 60%. While this number might be encouraging to some, healthcare lags behind organizations such as software and tech companies, who naturally are advanced in digital transformation, as well as transportation and logistics firms.

While different industries were surveyed, some commonalities show digital transformation exists as a common problem between them. For instance, around 80% of respondents stated that they found “enriching” existing data quite difficult, impeding the quest to find new insights or meaningful patterns. This is also an issue seen in hospitals and health systems, as ensuring healthcare data quality can be a considerable challenge for many – something which is preventable with proper patient identity management – more on that later.

Healthcare data quality issues also lead to losing time and resources as data needs to be rectified for usage. The survey also reflected this issue – around 40% of the respondents stated that their data teams have to spend time to clean the data, time which they could’ve spent doing something more productive, as data quality issues should not exist in the first place.

Healthcare data quality issues have a long history

It’s no secret that patient misidentification is a crucial issue in health systems and hospitals, and it leads to patient data integrity failure. Just imagine that a patient named Sam Jackson comes to the hospital and is assigned the medical record with the name “Sam Jackson”. However, the EHR actually belongs to a different Sam Jackson! The modified EHR will be full of errors and will be unusable and dangerous for both the Sams.

Such problems have been going on for a long, long time, leading to patient data quality issues, medication errors, wrong treatments, detrimental healthcare outcomes, readmissions, and more.

High-quality patient data is a must

Hospitals and health systems have been investing considerable money and resources in population health management, big data, analytics, and other projects that can transform healthcare for their patients in a variety of ways. However, the only way these efforts can work is if they have access to patient data that is complete, accurate, timely, and relevant. Unfortunately, when patient data is corrupted because of duplicate and overlay records from identification issues, these investments are diluted and affect ROI, patient safety, and healthcare outcomes.

Digital transformation in healthcare, as a result, requires high-quality patient data, and everything depends on identifying the accurate patient record right from the start – something which RightPatient is built for.

RightPatient ensures patient data integrity

RightPatient has been ensuring patient data integrity for several hospitals with its touchless patient identification platform. Registered patients are identified accurately right from the start – all they need to do is look at the camera and the platform provides the right medical record. By ensuring that accurate patient information is fed into EHRs every time, RightPatient ensures that high-quality data is present within the facilities to boost digital transformation efforts and investments – improving patient outcomes and reducing unwanted incidents in the process.

How Identity Management in Healthcare Helps With the Interoperability & Patient Access Rule

July 14, 2021/7023 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, EHR, healthcare, Patient Data, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

With COVID-19, telehealth, data breaches, and other challenges, healthcare providers have had their hands full. Because COVID-19 is a national health crisis, CMS pushed back compliance with its Interoperability and Patient Access rule until July 1, 2021, though it’s been effective since the start of 2021. Nevertheless, with mass vaccinations across the country, as well as hospitals slowly opening, CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) will require healthcare providers to comply from July 1. So, let’s examine a few of these requirements, the way it mandates correct information of patients, and the way proper identity management in healthcare facilities can ensure patient data integrity.

The reason CMS is gambling hugely on this rule

Like all the rules out there, the CMS Interoperability and Patient Access rule is comprehensive – the majority of it requires healthcare facilities to remove any restrictions which normally prevent patient information exchanges all across the healthcare gamut.

Under this rule, CMS plans to improve interoperability along with patient access – assisting the providers as well as patients to ensure proper healthcare outcomes.

Concerning interoperability, CMS wants the rule to aid in assisting healthcare providers to share and access patient information securely and effectively. That will assist in improving collaboration and improving healthcare outcomes as it will help make informed decisions more accurately.

On the other hand, patients, when they’ll get access to their health information, will be more involved with care decisions, increasing patient engagement.

Improving patient data access across the care continuum has several benefits such as improving healthcare outcomes, cutting costs, reducing redundant lab tests, reducing inefficiencies, and boosting collaboration among the caregivers – improving healthcare results as well. Though, all that will happen only if patient data integrity is rigorously maintained, and this requires immaculate identity management in healthcare facilities.

Healthcare providers must support e-notifications

As a segment of this rule, CMS necessitates healthcare givers (which utilize EHR systems) like critical access, acute care facilities, and psychiatric hospitals must deliver e-notifications to the patient’s other caregivers like primary care doctors, post-acute providers and suppliers, amongst other entities during ADT (admission, discharge, or transfer) events – appropriate for ED as well as inpatient admissions. This data has to consist of the patient’s basic information, the name of the sending organization, and if needed, the diagnosis of the patient.

But how does identity management in healthcare facilities play a part here?

So, patient identification in the majority of hospitals as well as health systems is yet a substantial dilemma for several causes. The outcomes can be distressing – patient misidentification can lead to making errors with medical records, mixing up patients, medical identity theft, damaging healthcare results, getting readmitted to a hospital or it could end up killing someone!

Think about it. What if an incorrect alert gets delivered to the incorrect caregiver because of a patient identification error – it would end up a disaster for everyone, if unnoticed. Not just would it impede the outcome for the patient, it would additionally compromise CMS compliance – affecting reimbursements, something that is very important for the majority of healthcare suppliers.

Whilst incorrect patient identification is quite common in the majority of healthcare facilities, reliable caregivers are utilizing RightPatient to guarantee immaculate identity management in healthcare facilities.

The Way RightPatient guarantees accurate identity management in healthcare facilities

RightPatient is the leading patient ID platform that identifies patients accurately at any touchpoint in the care continuum. By accurately identifying patient records right from registration and beyond, RightPatient prevents false alerts and ensures that the appropriate healthcare organization receives e-notifications. Since RightPatient also ensures patient data integrity by protecting patient information, it also leads to lower readmissions, boosting CMS compliance down the line. RightPatient also enhances patient safety, prevents medical errors, red-flags fraudsters in real-time – improving the bottom line in the process.

How are YOU planning to ensure CMS compliance at your healthcare facility?

Curbing Healthcare Identity Theft During Telehealth as it Gains the Biden Administration’s Support

July 13, 2021/7143 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, healthcare, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety, Telehealth /by Matt Gibson

So, this topic shouldn’t surprise you, but many folks are happy about the announcement. You can’t help but have seen that the use of telehealth soared after the COVID-19 pandemic occurred in the United States along with the easing of any of the surrounding restrictions. Telehealth is here to stay now, but there are concerns regarding healthcare identity theft. Ok, its usage has fallen slightly currently, although there is an ever-expanding amount of healthcare specialists, patients, and providers who wish to institute these virtual visits into a permanent healthcare option. Luckily, that appears to be a good possibility since the Biden administration supports this, so long as it meets precise conditions. Nevertheless, there are additional problems to solve – the most important one is medical identity theft occurring during a session.

Therefore, let’s look closer at the role of telehealth in healthcare, the reason lots of folks now support it, the way the Biden administration supports it, as well as the way RightPatient can avert medical ID theft cases during a remote session.

Telehealth is getting more popular amongst providers and users

Telehealth has existed for many years, however, it only revealed its full potential when the COVID-19 pandemic occurred. Since people weren’t able to see their providers in person and many elective procedures got postponed indefinitely, healthcare givers, as well as the government, rushed to provide another method of treating non-critical patients. Telehealth proved to be the answer.

Since another method of treating patients was urgently needed, telehealth got elected, and many of its previous restrictions got lessened. Telehealth got very popular amongst caregivers and patients. A lot of younger patients even decided they prefer telehealth sessions and will use them after the COVID-19 pandemic ends.

Though, a lot are concerned that whenever the pandemic ends, the restrictions on telehealth will return and it will again be hard to use.

The future of Telehealth seems great – Yet there’s a need for the correct framework

Luckily, that is not going to occur, as the Biden administration has said it is going to support expanded telehealth access when the COVID-19 problem ends. Because it assisted in providing virtual care as well as has also ensured patients were safe during this unprecedented timeframe, it has earned a substantial amount of backers who profited from telehealth, so wish to carry it on.

Congress is looking at the present scenario, contemplating which of the regulations on virtual care ought to change whenever the Covid emergency is done. Currently, there are about forty-three bills that have provisions regarding telehealth that have been generated since the start of the pandemic, according to the Alliance for Connected Care.

Still, HHS Secretary, Mr. Becerra, asserted that everyone must be able to access telehealth, and care quality must be ensured. The Biden administration aims to ensure U.S. citizens get top-notch healthcare through virtual appointments – he said they do not wish folks to get billed for items that do not improve the services.

Healthcare identity theft can happen during a virtual visit as well

So, whilst telehealth’s future seems bright, a few issues must be ironed out. The healthcare providers additionally have to work to ensure patients get the top care and stay safe from medical identity theft.

One of the concerns some have overlooked regarding telehealth visits is medical identity theft cases that may happen in a session. Exactly like the way healthcare frauds as well as healthcare identity theft occurs in an in-person appointment, experts predict these will happen in virtual visits too. Healthcare suppliers must make sure that is averted – something they can accomplish via better identification of patients during the telehealth visits. Thankfully, RightPatient assists with doing that, and even more!

RightPatient averts healthcare identity theft in real-time

For years RightPatient has prevented medical ID theft as well as healthcare fraud, thus, safeguarding millions of patient records throughout several top hospitals and many health systems. RightPatient leads the way in touchless biometric patient ID platforms which makes sure patients get identified correctly throughout the care field. Consequently, when a bad actor attempts to pass themselves off as a patient, RightPatient red flags them, avoiding medical identity theft instantly, even during virtual visits.

RightPatient does not just assist in preventing healthcare identity theft, but it additionally safeguards patient information, ensures patient safety, and decreases litigation costs related to identity theft incidents.

Since the Biden administration backs telehealth, the future of using it looks great. Yet, caregivers must avert problems connecting to virtual appointments, and serious issues such as medical ID theft can be avoided with RightPatient.

What is the way you prevent these cases of identity theft in your medical facility?

Claim Denials are Damaging More Than 30 Percent of Hospitals – Are You Stopping Them?

July 12, 2021/6695 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, Denied Claims, EHR, healthcare, Patient Identification, Patient Safety, Revenue Cycle Management /by Matt Gibson

Claim denials have always been a problem – it is a fact that they have occurred in all kinds of health issues for many years. Nevertheless, it got pushed to the back of the line due to the COVID-19 as well as problems with IT in the healthcare field, efforts to get people vaccinated, etc.

Sadly, claim denials have gone up – they are happening much more often now. In fact, it’s reported they have gone up 20 percent in the last 5 years! That, along with other gloomy statistics, was announced in a recent study from Harmony Healthcare. With that out of the way, it’s time to look more closely at this situation and how revenue cycle management in healthcare operations can be improved by identifying patients correctly.

A short update on claim denials

Claim denials, additionally called denied claims, are simply claims normally sent in by a healthcare supplier to the authorized payer, except for particular reasons, they were deemed “unpayable.” That occurs because of issues with coding and billing, mixing up medical records, missing filing deadlines, inadequate medical needs, or additional pertinent explanations.

So, here is what’s going on currently regarding denied claims.

Several disturbing statistics concerning denied claims

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered nearly everything to become worse, including denied claims. In fact, the earlier stated study showed a massive one-third of hospitals stated their denial rates were 10% or over. The study included more than 130 healthcare providers all over the United States and this rate of denial ranged between 6 and 13%. The accepted “danger zone” for denied claims is touted as 10%.

This study likewise explained why hospital administrators think denied claims happen. Thirty-two percent said it was caused due to coding errors while twenty percent said the reason was front-end concerns. Nonetheless, both these issues may be based on mix-ups with medical records, which comes from patients being misidentified – we will speak more on that topic later.

Whilst these revealed denied claim frequency, what’re the real issues denied claims cause?

The massive effect of denied claims

Denied claims are exceedingly expensive if faced – and may amount to around $4.9 million for the healthcare supplier. No matter how big or small a provider is, that is a huge portion of cash, and could even cause some hospitals to close.

Understand, denied claims are not merely expensive on their own, FTEs or full-time equivalents must do their best to fix any coding errors so the successive claims won’t be refused or refuted. This means the FTEs aren’t doing their normal job, which slows down other work and causes the whole process to be ineffective. Altogether, these facts cause a major blow to the bottom line of these hospitals.

As earlier stated, numerous denied claims are generated because of issues at the front end as well as coding mistakes, which happen a lot due to misidentifying patients.

The way denied claims and misidentifying patients are linked

This is very easy to figure out – it begins at the registration desk. The incorrect EHR gets noted with the patient, so, incorrect info is placed in the medical record. That may occur because of an error like an overlay or duplicate. If no one discovers the error before the treatment is concluded, the patient’s provider ends up sending the wrong claim info to the authorized payer.

As the claim is being processed, the authorized payer closely inspects it and sees there are errors, thus the claim gets denied. Misidentifying patients causes coding errors and front-end problems. These issues can be averted if the patient is identified properly.

RightPatient decreases claim denials, and goes beyond!

RightPatient helps many healthcare facilities protect millions of their patients’ records. It’s the industry’s top touchless biometric patient identification platform. It works by identifying patients via facial recognition, thus averting overlays, duplicates, and mix-ups with medical records from the beginning. Therefore, this averts the claim from being denied, thus saving hospitals lots of money. It just may be the answer you need to reducing denied claims.

The benefits of RightPatient do not end there. Besides reducing denied claims, RightPatient improves patient safety, enhances healthcare outcomes, and ensures positive patient outcomes.

Does your healthcare facility prevent denied claims efficiently?

How to Protect Patient Data at Your Hospital

July 2, 2021/7594 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, healthcare, HIM, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Data, Patient Errors, Patient Identification, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

The U.S. healthcare system has never had a shortage of problems – it has always dealt with several issues simultaneously. The exorbitant prices, the lack of price transparency, medical identity theft cases, lack of patient identification in hospitals, preventable medical errors, and archaic laws are just some issues that plague healthcare. Healthcare data breaches have unfortunately been growing at an exponential rate. With no signs of them stopping anytime soon, it becomes crucial that healthcare providers, professionals, and everyone involved with patient information be vigilant regarding protecting the data. With that out of the way, let’s take a look at how to protect patient data within hospitals and health systems with 5 practices.

Why protecting patient data is becoming so important

Those who are familiar with the U.S. healthcare system know that data breaches are occurring left, right, and center. These data breaches have several grave consequences such as patient information being stolen, being sold in the black market, being used for medical identity theft, patient data integrity failure, litigation costs, loss of goodwill – the list just goes on. And all of this might occur simply because a healthcare staff member opened an external email without being wary of the possible risks.

As a result, healthcare professionals and facilities need to be on guard at all times against such cyberattacks so that they don’t lead to data breaches, disruption of operations, or the most common endgame – medical identity theft.

With the “why” out of the way, let’s dive into the “how”, to be more precise, how to protect patient data.

How to protect patient data with 5 practices

Work on HIPAA compliance

HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, mandates that healthcare providers along with anyone else dealing with patient information protect patient information effectively at all times. It provides many rules and regulations that cover a lot of aspects, and if applicable organizations aren’t ensuring compliance, then they’ll be heavily penalized.

However, working on HIPAA compliance just for the sake of avoiding penalties won’t help. HIPAA provides several guidelines on how to protect patient data at rest and during transmission. If these guidelines are taken as starting points, not only will HIPAA compliance be ensured, but patient data will also be protected – reducing chances of data breaches. There are even solutions such as HIPAA compliance software that can also aid in compliance – helping identify security gaps and reducing the administrative burden in the process.

Improve user authentication practices

Patient data can be breached from anywhere, and with many healthcare staff working remotely, the risks are just increasing. Putting safeguards in place that enforce limited access to everyone that deals with patient information can slow down breaches. This way, even if the hacker has access to the employee’s account, they will only have restricted access to sensitive information.

Always encrypt sensitive information

Encrypting sensitive information makes it useless for hackers – it makes the information unreadable by outsiders or unauthorized users. Enforce employees’ use of encryption whenever transmitting sensitive patient information.

Provide training on patient data security whenever required

Too many training sessions on patient information security can be ineffective and counterproductive, and too few can reduce its importance. Instead, find the sweet spot for your organization to provide training sessions regarding patient information security.

For instance, whenever there’s news about another data breach that can provide meaningful information, conducting a training session and disseminating the information to the employees can help – learning from others’ mistakes might just be the thing that will prevent a data breach. Also, regularly provide updates on how to handle external emails and requests – the safest bet is treating each email as a suspicious one.

Implement solutions that protect patient data

Several constraints prohibit healthcare providers from fully being protected against data breaches – cybersecurity budgets and hackers coming up with innovative ways to attack being the most common ones. However, while data breaches might seem inevitable for many, patient data can be protected, but how?

RightPatient is the answer.

It is a touchless biometric patient identification platform that prevents medical identity theft in real-time. By ensuring accurate patient identification, RightPatient successfully red-flags fraudsters during the registration process. This prevents fraudsters from tampering with the EHRs, ensuring patient data integrity, and protecting patient data in the process.

How are you protecting patient data at your healthcare facility?

Ensuring Data Integrity in Healthcare Facilities is Critical in a Post-Pandemic World

June 29, 2021/6394 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, EHR, healthcare, Patient Data, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

Starting on a positive note, it’s safe to say that we’ve seen the worst of the pandemic, at least in the U.S. Now that over 310 million Americans are vaccinated against the notorious COVID-19, almost everything is slowly but surely returning to the “old normal”. We’re saying “almost” because COVID-19 is still affecting a lot of people, businesses, institutions, and industries. The U.S. healthcare system, for instance, arguably faced the worst challenges it has ever had last year, leading to astronomical losses. While providers are opening their doors slowly, it’s estimated that they will face collective losses of over $120 billion this year. This makes it quite clear – hospitals need to implement strategies that can reduce losses, and ensuring patient data integrity in healthcare facilities might just be the answer, leading to improved quality and safety in healthcare – let’s dive deep.

How COVID-19 changed our realities

Well, even if you’ve been living under a rock, you’d have noticed that the entire world changed last year. Social gatherings, sporting events, rallies, basically anything that included a large number of people were suspended and lockdowns were imposed to flatten the curve and reduce the infection rate. While different countries implemented lockdowns differently, all of them had one thing in common – the healthcare systems were shaken to their cores due to the unprecedented challenges.

COVID-19 was devastating for healthcare providers

In the U.S., hospitals had to suspend their regular operations, elective procedures, and in-person visits to take care of the COVID-19 patients. Healthcare teams and frontline workers did everything possible to fight COVID-19 as they risked their lives. As a result, hospitals had to cut off sources that normally would bring in revenue, and losses were around $323 billion last year. Surgeries usually are a huge source of revenue for healthcare organizations, and as they were postponed indefinitely, hospital finances plummeted.

Before going into how ensuring patient data integrity in healthcare facilities can reduce significant losses down the line, let’s take a look at some stats regarding surgeries.

Some worrying stats regarding surgeries

According to research conducted by McKinsey & Company, hospitals and health systems saw (on average) a 35% decline in surgical cases from March 2020 to July 2020. The same research also mentions that working on this backlog might require at least two years even if facilities can operate at 110% capacity!

According to additional research, elective surgeries declined by around 193% after CMS recommended healthcare providers postpone non-emergency procedures back in 2020 – leading to unprecedented losses.

Moreover, only half of the healthcare providers want to implement strategies or solutions that can help them deal with this growing backlog. Moreover, around 80% of these same individuals believe that they can grow next year.

What they are failing to realize is that times have changed and so has the healthcare space. Telehealth is dominating and everyone is worried about hospital-acquired infections – healthcare has changed significantly. In this case, the hospitals and clinics that adapt themselves to the new changes will be the ones that will not only survive but will also thrive in the long run. While data integrity in healthcare has been sidelined during the pandemic, ensuring it becomes an important priority now can make all the difference.

But how is that relevant to surgeries?

Patient data integrity in healthcare facilities can go a long way

Well, collecting and analyzing data properly can prevent losses, ensure smoother operations, and lead to boosted bottom lines. In fact, healthcare organizations that properly utilize data can make accurate forecasts, provide improved healthcare outcomes, and prevent medical errors. One of the key components of that is patient data – something which must be accurate at all costs.

Ensuring patient data integrity in healthcare facilities can be challenging, but using the proper tools can drastically reduce adverse effects.

For instance, patient data integrity failure can lead to duplicate medical records or overlays, patient safety incidents, detrimental healthcare outcomes, patient mix-ups, wrong procedures, and more. However, RightPatient is a solution that ensures patient data integrity right off the bat.

RightPatient ensures patient data integrity in healthcare facilities

RightPatient is a robust touchless patient identification platform that solves one of the most crucial but overlooked issues of healthcare – patient misidentification. However, it brings several other benefits to healthcare providers and their patients.

By ensuring that the accurate medical record is used every time the registered patient comes in, RightPatient prevents mix-ups and duplicates, ensures patient data integrity, and ensures that data quality is maintained at all times.

RightPatient has been proudly protecting millions of patient records at several hospitals for years now with positive patient identification – are you protecting your patients properly?