HIPAA compliance in the OR.

Many current information management practices in the OR will have to change to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and meet Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations standards for managing health care information. Demands for accurate, timely, confidential, and secure data make an integrated automated system for information management imperative. Delivering health care in today's OR environment results in enormous amounts of data. Caregivers must transform this data into useable information, while protecting patient privacy, confidentiality, and the security of health care information.

[Quality of documentation of intraoperative and postoperative complications : improvement of documentation for a nationwide quality assurance program and comparison with routine data]. / Dokumentationsqualität intra- und postoperativer Komplikationen : Verbesserung der Dokumentation für die verpflichtende Qualitätssicherung und Vergleich mit DRG-Routinedaten.

INTRODUCTION: Complications after cholecystectomy are continuously documented in a nationwide database in Germany. Recent studies demonstrated a lack of reliability of these data. The aim of the study was to evaluate the impact of a control algorithm on documentation quality and the use of routine diagnosis coding as an additional validation instrument. METHODS: Completeness and correctness of the documentation of complications after cholecystectomy was compared over a time interval of 12 months before and after implementation of an algorithm for faster and more accurate documentation. Furthermore, the coding of all diagnoses was screened to identify intraoperative and postoperative complications. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: The sensitivity of the documentation for complications improved from 46 % to 70 % (p = 0.05, specificity 98 % in both time intervals). A prolonged time interval of more than 6 weeks between patient discharge and documentation was associated with inferior data quality (incorrect documentation in 1.5 % versus 15 %, p < 0.05). The rate of case documentation within the 6 weeks after hospital discharge was clearly improved after implementation of the control algorithm. Sensitivity and specificity of screening for complications by evaluating routine diagnoses coding were 70 % and 85 %, respectively. The quality of documentation was improved by implementation of a simple memory algorithm.

[ICPM-independent documentation of new reimbursement forms--method and 1995 results]. / ICPM-unabhängige Dokumentation der neuen Entgeltformen--Methode und Ergebnisse 1995.

The structural health care law (known as the Gesundheitsstrukturgesetz or GSG) of the Federal Republic of Germany has been enacted to replace the covering cost prices by various forms of payment. On the basis of the Godesberg Diagnosis and Therapy Catalogue, a new system has been developed that assesses all new implications of the care benefit law. With the help of intelligent plausibility tests, a particular case (PC) or a special rate (SR) is suggested. The documentation system works without ICPM numbers. The conversion of diagnosis and therapies to ICD-10/ICPM numbers is possible. The results of the first half of 1995 and the second half of 1995 show that only two-fifths of operations can be assessed with PC or SR. Neither emphasis on certain operations nor the more differentiated illnesses are recognised as extra costs by the GSG regulations. Complete and correct documentation is achieved by a strict and stratified control system.