Home Health & Hospice Week

Make sure your surveyors have access to patient files -- even the ones stored electronically. Patient privacy is at the top of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' agenda. In a letter to state survey agency directors, CMS reiterated that it supports and encourages the use of electronic health records (EHRs) and is "committed to a goal that by 2014, most Americans will have access to health care providers who use EHRs," a goal first established by President George W. Bush in 2004. Surveyors must be able to conduct the survey process consistently across facilities -- whether those facilities use paper-based records or electronic ones, CMS said in the letter. To ensure that consistency,surveyors should discuss their process with each facility in the beginning so that surveyors are allowed unrestricted access to medical records. Teamwork: Providers must help surveyors access the records they need regardless of how those records are stored. [...]