A couple of things happened today that I thought I would like to share with you. All elements of your practice can learn from these experiences; the front office, nursing staff, medical billing staff, management, cleaning personnel.

The first involves the use of illicit substances. An employee in a local school system cafeteria burned her hand. On the surface a simple matter to be sure, but once she presented at the medical office for care, the board agreed to accept her as a worker's compensation case and shortly after that conversation the practice phone rang again. This time the board requested a drug test. The patient was advised and consented to the test. Now remember, this is now a worker's comp case and the patient in accepting that status does not maintain the right to privacy with respect to this or any future visit regarding this injury. Once the report on the drug test came back the patient now wants that information to be held back because it is damaging. Most boards of education are dependent on state and federal money to pay the bills and along with that money comes certain strings; one being the safe and drug free schools program. The likelihood is that a job will be lost, could be some criminal consequences. What do you think?

The second thing that happened today involves a practice that we have helped for many years. The front office employee left the practice in a lurch. But that is not half of the problem. She left with the front office copy of the protocols and in that copy were most of the current log ons and passwords for the various insurance companies they serve. That in itself was bad enough except that just before leaving, she took the liberty of setting herself up as the administrator on the accounts and changed all of the passwords. The provider was in a panic because they are in the habit of verifying all insurance companies and most of those they are doing on-line. I assured him that we would get on top of it for him and that in the interim we could use our log ons and/or we could use the phones to get insurance verification information for him. This is a task that is usually performed in the provider office, but it is just one more little thing that we bring to the table in medical billing. For no extra charge we are happy to cover that base on a short term basis and in the meantime re-establish all of the log ons and passwords the ensure HIPAA compliance. By close of business we had managed to get all of the log ons and passwords changed with the exception of two and the proper paperwork on those two were being mailed so they could be changed. The provider was ecstatic at the promptness of the actions and my staff is to be commended for going above and beyond. Also, the staff member doing the work had arranged to take the day off tomorrow, but has now volunteered to come in just to be available should this practice need our assistance.

Now how do both of these tie into your practice? Both deal with the legal liabilities of the practice. Before these matters appear, you need to establish the proper protocols to handle each of these occurrences and to ensure that you are not plagued by a staff that presents with either or both of the issues above.



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