Medical Data Impact to Financial Health, Disability and Job Protection – #HITsm Chat Topic

We’re excited to share the topic and questions for this week’s #HITsm chat happening Friday, 11/10 at Noon ET (9 AM PT). This week’s chat will be hosted by Kimberly George (@kimberlyanngeo) from @sedgwick on the topic of “Medical Data Impact to Financial Health, Disability and Job Protection.”

Short term disability, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and similar leave of absence programs – including workers’ compensation – are designed to ensure the employment and income of the American worker is protected at a time of illness or injury. Regardless as to whether an employee is seeking wage reimbursement, a leave of absence, or a job accommodation, sufficient, accurate and timely medical documentation is required.

But what happens when accurate medical documentation is not received? Is incomplete? Or not received on a timely basis? The request for benefits is placed in a pending or denied status, wages are not paid or significantly delayed, and challenges mount for the patient.

While the burden to submit medical records, and supporting documentation falls to the patient, there is an uptick in payer and employer interest to help solve for the challenges of obtaining sufficient medical information on a timely basis. Medical documentation often requires diagnosis, subjective and objective medical information, including an assessment of functionality pertinent to the patient’s physical capabilities. This functional assessment is often defined by the benefit plan, law, and the employer’s policy.

Receipt of medical information on a timely basis is a major factor in the denial of disability benefits for people seeking support for a disability, leave of absence or workers compensation claim. Number one reason for a reversal of the denial is late receipt of the medical documentation.

The objective of this chat is for #HITsm community to share their insight, ideas and opinions about the identification, collection, and sharing of a patient’s medical and functional status with proper release of information to the payer directly. Quite simply, how can technology, process, policy and people speed up the process so patients and payers have the medical records needed to make accurate, timely and fair benefit decisions?

Reference Materials:

Join us as we dive into this topic during this week’s #HITsm chat using the following questions.

Topics for This Week’s #HITsm Chat:

T1: What issues, obstacles and/or missing capabilities prevent or hinder an individual’s ability to collect their medical records? #HITsm

T2: How are patients impacted when benefit approval requires medical documentation and medical records are not available? #HITsm

T3: How can patients, support networks, employers, government or others support the capture, storage & retrieval of medical records? #HITsm

T4: What technologies and/or new approaches can assist w/ capture, storage & retrieval of medical record data? #HITsm

T5: What reasonable policy and/or regulatory changes could be implemented to accelerate & expedite benefit processing on behalf of consumers? #HITsm

Bonus: What stakeholders, resources, & companies should be engaged to assist w/ building & delivering a medical records collection solution? #HITsm

Upcoming #HITsm Chat Schedule
11/17 – MACRA/MIPS: Chutes & Ladders 2.0
Hosted by Jim Tate (@jimtate) from EMR Advocate and MIPS Consulting.

11/24 – Thanksgiving Break!

12/1 – Using Technology to Fight EHR Burnout
Hosted by Gabe Charbonneau, MD (@gabrieldane)

12/8 – TBD
Hosted by Homer Chin (@chinhom) and Amy Fellows (@afellowsamy) from @MyOpenNotes)

12/15 – TBD
Hosted by David Fuller (@genkidave)

We look forward to learning from the #HITsm community! As always, let us know if you’d like to host a future #HITsm chat or if you know someone you think we should invite to host.

If you’re searching for the latest #HITsm chat, you can always find the latest #HITsm chat and schedule of chats here.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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