All Entries Tagged With: "HINN"
Inpatient HINNs: Protecting the hospital’s right to recover payment for non-covered services
Last week, I participated in an HCPro audioconference on HINNs. “HINN” stands for hospital-issued notice of non-coverage. It’s the inpatient equivalent of an advanced beneficiary notice (ABN). Under Medicare’s limitation on liability (LOL) provisions, hospitals are required to provide prior notice, in a prescribed form, when certain outpatient or inpatient services ordered by a physician do not meet Medicare’s medical necessity guidelines for the patient’s condition.
In such cases, the ABN is the prescribed form of prior notice for outpatient services, while the HINN is the prescribed from of prior notice for inpatient services. Although the prior notice requirements for LOL have been in place for a number of years, hospitals continue to struggle to provide timely, appropriate notification, particularly in the inpatient setting. [more]
Never Events—CMS issues surgical error NCDs and related guidance
In 2002, the National Quality Forum (NQF) published a list of 27 events identified as “serious, largely preventable and of concern to both the public and health care providers.” These events have become more popularly known as “never events”—events that should never occur in a well-run health care facility with appropriate quality controls. The updated list currently contains 28 adverse events, including the following surgical errors:
- Wrong surgical or other invasive procedure performed on a patient;
- Surgical or other invasive procedure performed on the wrong body part; and
- Surgical or other invasive procedure performed on the wrong patient.
