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ECM: Healthcare and HIMSS and Form Capture
The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) held their annual meeting a few weeks back in New Orleans. There is a huge interest now in the digital management of medical records and information. Standards are slowly taking hold for accelerating the capture, collection and collaboration of medical data.
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HL7 (Health Level 7) has emerged as a data exchange standard for clinical, financial and adminstrative information. Every major medical information systems vendor supports HL7 protocols for data exchange. |
But paper still abounds in the system. The Health Care Financing Adminsitration (HCFA) has initiated changes to some of the most common forms used for billing — and that’s making news. The uniform billing form is used by hospitals, nursing homes, hospice, home health agencies and other institutional providers. The uniform method of billing was first introduced in 1975 as a simplified and nationally accepted billing form.
For 2007, the existing ‘standard bill’ UB-92 form has been redesigned and is being updated. After May 22, 2007 the previous version of the form will no longer be accepted. It is being replaced with a newer version called UB-04. The newer form realigns data to be more consistent with the electronic version of the same form and provides additional space for alternative reporting of data.
At HIMSS07 there was significant interest in how to prepare for the capture and OCR processing of the new UB-04 forms. It looks like small steps are happening towards aligning paper with electronic data capture. But until the focus moves away from paper to digital we’re still a long way from reforming the existing system.
