Pat Carrier, CEO

As you all know, Texas recently passed its new   

state budget for the next two years. There were significant cuts across many state services, but the two largest areas of decreases were in education and health care. Education got a lot of attention

with a budget decrease of over 4 billion dollars,

but what most people outside of health care do

not know is that the state Medicaid program was decreased by over 11 billion dollars. These decreases affect many services paid for by Medicaid including inpatient and outpatient hospital services.

Every hospital in the state is affected by the budget cuts, and the decrease in reimbursement varies by hospital. For CHRISTUS Santa Rosa the initial cut to our Medicaid funding was 27%. I say 'initial' because this is a process still in motion and it is possible that we will see that decrease change as the details of the budget reductions become clearer.

Read on  

• The #1 problematic documentation standard continues to be timing and dating of all medical record entries. 
• Also problematic is timely authentication of verbal orders within 24 hours. 
• Did you know that the most commonly seen unapproved abbreviation is QD?

 Click here to review a slide presentation reviewing Joint Commission standards related to Medical Staff documentation.

There is a common misperception that if a physician dictates an operative note immediately following surgery then a hand-written immediate post-operative note is not needed.  However, a post-op progress note must be available in the medical record prior to the patient leaving the operating room and before the patient moves to the next level of care. The post-op progress note has been updated and is available in each of our operating rooms to assist in compliance with this requirement.

The required elements of the post-op progress note are: