Today, I began the day by learning all about the ins and outs of HIPAA, which is the guidelines everyone in the medical field has to abide by when dealing with patient confidentiality. Because I was eventually going to be seeing patient records, I had to go through a 36 slide presentation about HIPAA and then take a test. As one of my hosts explained with genuine regret, this was government mandated and not their decision. Even though I was promised extremely dry, boring information, I actually found the expectations and origins of HIPAA to be rather interesting, though I did reach a point where I was ready to be done with learning about the Hippocratic Oath and Enforcement Rules and PHI.
Once having completed the test, I was explained the idea behind the “Basic Revenue Cycle,” which is the process in which patients are billed and physicians are paid for their services. I was told that I would be going through each of the different parts of the basic revenue cycle and the respective employees who completed different tasks associated with the cycle.
I sat with two of the individuals who are involved in the first two steps of the cycle for most of the day, and it was very interesting to learn about what it is they do and why each step of their job is so important. For instance, I sat with one of the medical coders, who told me all about the process she goes through for medical coding. In a nutshell, every procedure and diagnosis in the medical field has a code. These codes have to be entered and checked for every patient who comes through in order to make sure they are being billed for the correct procedure, and also to make sure that their medical record is accurate. I very quickly realized how important this step is, because of one of the codes is off in some way, it can mess up the entire system. This made me think of the process as a sort of metaphorical assembly line; if one step of the cycle gets off course, the whole process can be compromised.
I had a great first day and look forward to what is coming!