Power Your Practice

Question: Our senior partner wants us to stop using Social Security numbers as patient identifiers immediately. Furthermore, he wants them removed from charts as charts are handled. We do not require patients to disclose this information if they choose not to. Medicare uses the SS# as the patient identifier, Ohio Workers’ Comp uses SS#, and our PMS system uses it as well.

We have multiple patients with the same dates of birth and, interestingly, a handful of patients with the same names AND date of birth! We will be migrating to a new PMS/EMR in several months and I had hoped to make this change at that time.

If not the SS#, what data are you using as the patient identifier?

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As the date to switch to the ICD-10 diagnostic coding system gets closer, medical practices have one question: How much is implementation going to cost?

Nachimson Advisors, LLC was retained by several healthcare organizations to answer that very question. After crunching the numbers, the final cost of implementing ICD-10 appears unsettling.

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