{"id":2253,"date":"2010-12-13T03:28:19","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T03:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.empowerbpo.com\/blog\/?p=2253"},"modified":"2023-03-01T17:12:11","modified_gmt":"2023-03-01T17:12:11","slug":"red-flags-physicians-exempt-from-rules-under-new-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.empowerelearning.com\/blog\/red-flags-physicians-exempt-from-rules-under-new-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Flags: Physicians Exempt from Rules Under New Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, it’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.\u00a0Because in Washington, the politicians and bureaucrats just keep on giving.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

First, we learned that the big Medicare rate cut set to hit physicians’ practices on Dec. 1 was\u00a0delayed for a month\u00a0while Congress hammered out a longer postponement. Yesterday, we\u00a0learned that\u00a0the longer\u00a0delay\u00a0— all the way through the end of next year — is\u00a0at hand, though the sides had not yet agreed formally. We’ve also learned a of Medicare’s plans to begin covering\u00a0a new annual wellness exam\u00a0and to bump primary-care physicians’ pay 10 percent next year.<\/p>\n

And now we learn\u00a0that the dreaded\u00a0Red Flags Rule<\/a>, which requires lenders to develop plans to ensure that consumers’ financial information is kept secure,\u00a0will not apply to physicians, after all,\u00a0thanks to legislation passed yesterday in Congress.<\/p>\n

We’ve been\u00a0writing about the Red Flags Rule\u00a0for at least a year and a half now. The rule, separate from HIPAA patient-privacy rules (to which you are absolutely still beholden, of course), required creditors to demonstrate a protocol “for detecting identity theft red flags, preventing and responding to identity theft, and for keeping their program up to date.” Under the Federal Trade Commission’s\u00a0interpretation, physicians had been considered creditors if they bill patients for fees not collected at the time of service — which is to say, everyone except maybe a cash-only walk-in clinic.<\/p>\n

Now, I still think that\u00a0having<\/i>\u00a0a protocol for preventing identity theft and checking for so-called financial red flags is a good idea. Check out the article linked above by Sara Michael. She suggests things like checking every patient’s ID, separating clinical from financial information, and looking out for “suspicious activity.” Surely you can do those things.<\/p>\n

The Red Flags Rule was (and still is, for those covered by it) about protecting consumers from identity theft. Under the new law, you needn’t do anything formal to\u00a0prove to the government you’re complying. And that’s great news. But your patients are giving you their credit cards, their bank account information, etc., and you still ought to do what you reasonably can to look out for them.<\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0physicianspractice.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, it’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.\u00a0Because in Washington, the politicians and bureaucrats just keep on giving. First, we learned that the big Medicare rate cut set to hit physicians’ practices on Dec. 1 was\u00a0delayed for a month\u00a0while Congress hammered out a longer postponement. Yesterday, we\u00a0learned that\u00a0the longer\u00a0delay\u00a0— all the way through the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[98,82],"class_list":["post-2253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-red-flags-rule","tag-compliance-training","tag-red-flags-rule"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.empowerelearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.empowerelearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.empowerelearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.empowerelearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.empowerelearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.empowerelearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.empowerelearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.empowerelearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.empowerelearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}