With two deadlines looming, can healthcare organizations be fully prepared? The Office for Civil Rights is randomly auditing for HIPAA compliance and this will continue through December 31, 2012. Right behind that is the October 2013 deadline for ICD-10 implementation. A recent survey showed most healthcare organizations charged with HIPAA compliance are not fully prepared for a privacy and security audit by federal regulators.

We found this interesting information on Health Leader Media in their article, “Most Providers Unprepared for HIPAA Audit.” The new ICD-10 classification system has five times more codes. Medical coding requires specialized expertise and systems tailored to the regulatory requirements in which health care providers, hospitals, and doctors deliver their services. Training staff is a key component of the transition.

Many widely used tagging systems lack the user friendly interface and may not implement a rigorous ANSI compliant coding subsystem. Access Innovations’ solutions are ANSI compliant and implement state-of-the-art technology to speed tagging and reduce errors.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.