Cerner is launching a voice-recognition and transcription app for mobile devices to support clinical documentation in an effort to reduce clinician burnout. The app transcribes conversations between health care providers and patients, sends the transcription to the clinician's mobile device and translates concepts for entry into Cerner's EHRs.

Health care app maker pMD has added patient communication capability to its pMD Secure Messaging platform for health care communication and collaboration. The new feature lets patients upload photos and videos, communicate with clinicians, and add contacts.

Alphabet unit Verily Life Sciences is seeking funding to add a 5,000-square-foot inpatient clinic to its tech-enabled OneFifteen addiction treatment center in the Dayton, Ohio, area. Kettering Health Network and Premier Health Partners also fund and support the clinic.

Unauthorized access of a Healthcare Administrative Partners employee's email account might have exposed the protected health information of 17,693 people. All passwords were reset after the incident, external emails are now labeled as such, restrictions on mailbox size and rules for archiving were implemented, and multifactor authentication options and employee training are being considered, according to the medical coding and billing firm.

Artificial intelligence can improve health care delivery and patient outcomes if health systems gain the support of patients and health care providers, invest in innovation, and develop strong data governance protocols, according to an American Hospital Association report. Physicians are concerned about the usability and accuracy of AI-based software, and patients worry about privacy and safety, according to the report, which recommends ways to increase patient and provider acceptance of AI.

HIPAA and California Consumer Privacy Act standards for what is and is not deidentified patient data differ, and those differences create a risk for HIPAA-covered entities, their business associates and other data aggregators, write attorneys Daniel Gottlieb and Mark Schreiber. Steps to reduce the risk of CCPA exposure when handling HIPAA deidentified data include updating HIPAA expert determinations to address the CCPA, updating security and privacy policies to incorporate CCPA requirements, and documenting how the CCPA definition of deidentified data has been met.

Health care providers can take several measures to pass or avoid a security audit by the HHS Office for Civil Rights, and the most important step is to "educate all staff members on the requirements contained within the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT Guide to Privacy and Security of Electronic Health Information," says Troy Young, chief technology officer at AdvancedMD. Other steps include reviewing policy and procedure documentation, discussing EHR and software data protection with vendors, setting strong passwords and frequently updating them, and creating a security risk assessment or management plan.

Psychiatry professor Arthur Kleinman learned first-hand the difference between a health care provider and a caregiver over the 11 years he cared for his wife, who had a form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease that also results in blindness. Caregivers are the center of health care, and "our whole health care system has got to be rethought, from the bottom up with attention to care at its core," Kleinman says.

Harvard University professor and hospital IT expert John Halamka has been hired as president of the Mayo Clinic platform, a data repository that will develop new analytics and digital services. Halamka said he wants to create a data "innovation factory" as Mayo focuses on in-home health care, digital diagnostics and clinical analytics.

AHIMA recently participated in a meeting of the ICD-10 Coordination and Maintenance (C&M) Committee, where members discussed ICD-10-CM proposals for codes for identification of specific synthetic opioids and revisions to the sepsis/severe sepsis codes. AHIMA supported these and other code proposals in our comment letter submitted to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). The Journal of AHIMA has the details.

This textbook is a collection of case studies, discussion questions and assignments designed to give coders practice applying their knowledge. With questions that span a range of Bloom's Taxonomy levels, this book is appropriate for students of all levels and would be an ideal complement for the newly updated Health Information Management and Health Information Management Technology textbooks. Order now.