Manager Information and Courses from MediaLab, Inc.
These are the MediaLab courses that cover Manager and links to relevant pages within the course.
Learn more about laboratory continuing education for medical technologists to earn CE credit for AMT, ASCP, NCA, and state license renewal and recertification. Or get information about laboratory safety and compliance courses that deliver cost-effective OSHA safety training and continuing education to your laboratory's employees.
| Case Study: Administrative Safeguards You are the technologist in charge of the hematology section in a hospital laboratory, and you are reviewing blood count results for 100 patients as part of an internal quality assurance project. You review the clinical findings in the electronic medical record to correlate with the laboratory results. The following week get a call from your hospital security officer. She says that a routine computer system audit has revealed that you accessed the records of 100 patients and she would like to know why.You tell her: | View Page |
| Case Study: Incidental disclosures and safeguards.
As a manager, you guided a group of high school students through your clinical laboratory during a field trip. You did not explain the laboratory's privacy policy to the teacher and students, because you thought they would have little access to PHI. However during the tour, the students overheard names of patients and blood tests, saw laboratory reports laying on desks, and viewed test results on computer screens. This is acceptable under the HIPAA Privacy Regulation since these were incidental disclosures that could not reasonably be prevented. | View Page |
| American Society for Clinical Laboratory ScienceThe American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science, ASCLS, joins the leadership effort to prevent medical errors and increase patient safety. | View Page |
| Element 6 Element 6:
The laboratory monitors and regularly audits compliance activities, policies and procedures to ensure they are being followed.If a problem is detected through the audit or monitoring process, it should be reported to the appropriate supervisor, manager or the CO. | View Page |
| HCPCS and CPT coding The HCFA (Health Care Financing Administration) Common Procedural Coding System (HCPCS) and the CPT (Current Procedural Terminology) codes are used to describe specific tests or services.
The amount of payment for a test is dependent on the HCPCS or CPT code.
HCPCS or CPT codes should be assigned under the supervision of the laboratory technical staff.
Billing department employees should never change a HCPCS or CPT code without the approval of a manager or compliance officer.
If a billing department clerk notices that a particular HCPCS or CPT code is being rejected by a payer they should report it to their manager.
It is against the law to use the wrong HCPCS or CPT code for the purpose of causing or increasing payment for a test.
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| Special role for managers/supervisors All compliance guidance documents point to leadership support as critical to an effective compliance program.Ethics and compliance go hand in hand.Managers have a responsibility to protect the company from illegal and unethical actions by employees.Managers can be sanctioned for the actions of employees who report to them.Managers can be sanctioned for failure to detect violations.Managers and supervisors are responsible for employee actions and must:
Talk to employees about compliance issues.
Ensure employees understand violations are serious.
Ensure employees understand that disciplinary action will be taken.
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| Managers must set example Behavior of the manager will set the tone for employees.Managers must have good attitude about compliance.Managers should encourage problem detection and reporting by responding properly.Never guess at the answers to questions.Attend training and education sessions with employees when possible. | View Page |
| Preventing whistleblowers Managers and supervisors are the company's first line of defense.Ensure that lines of communication remain open.Ensure that employees understand their responsibility to report problems.Respond with appropriate seriousness when a problem is reported.Always follow-up on employees questions and reports.
Ensure proper documentation is kept concerning reported problems and report them to the next level of authority when appropriate. | View Page |
| Excused charges and other inducements The laboratory should not offer or provide free testing to any individual in a position to make or control referral for laboratory services: The laboratory may write off charges only when laboratory errors in billing or testing occur. Sales and marketing personnel cannot offer free testing in any form unless approved by the compliance officer. Free testing for indigent patients must be approved by the compliance officer. Sales and marketing personnel cannot offer or give anything of value to a customer or potential customer beyond the usual promotional items. If a client solicits a questionable or illegal item or special consideration, it should be reported to the sales manager or compliance officer. | View Page |
| Sales proposals and discounts
All sales offerings and/or written proposals must be in compliance with policies or guidelines or pre-approved by the sales manager or compliance officer.The manner in which a sales or marketing person presents a discount of special price is as important as the amount of the discount.Sales and marketing employees must be very aware of the language used during the sales process to insure the customer understands exactly what is being offered.The offering of an illegal discount is the same as actually giving it.If a client solicits a questionable or illegal discount, it should be reported to the sales manager or compliance officer. | View Page |
| Case Study 5 The Client Services department which is a crowded room divided into cubicles which contain desks separated only by thin moveable dividers. Lots of activity, phones ringing, multiple conversations going on at once etc. A client service representative receives a call from a large client office that she speaks with every day for a variety of reasons. Today the client is requesting the laboratory to write off the charges for a test that the office person ordered incorrectly by mistake even though the laboratory has already done the test and reported the results back to the office. Since this service representative works with this office frequently she believes that this is a rare request. Actions that the client service representative may take are:Correct Answer: Refuse to write off the charges for the test and inform the client that it could be considered an inducement if the laboratory does that, which would make both the laboratory and the office liable should it ever come to light. Offer whatever billing options are available according to lab policies.
or
Refuse to write off the charges and explain to the client that approval must be obtained from the department manager or the laboratory compliance officer before any action can be taken because writing the test off could be considered an inducement.Discussion: The primary reason is that the test is not written off simply because the client asks for it to be done. Tests should never be written off by the laboratory automatically. There should always be an approval process involved or a policy that strictly forbids any write off except in the case an error on the part of the laboratory where documentation exists to support it. | View Page |
| Case Study 6 The setting is a large outreach or independent laboratory that processes a high volume of tests with tight resources and a lot of customer service turn around time deadlines to meet that are dependent on the specimen processing department to complete their work on time, every day and night. The manager of the specimen processing department receives a memorandum from the compliance officer (CO) that several of his employees have not attended their compliance training sessions.Since this is the initial training for the laboratory, the CO reminds the manager of the requirement that all employees attend. The employees listed in the memo are key employees, who are top performers in the department. The manager knows that they have been instructed to attend, and that attendance was mandatory but left it up to them to choose the session they would attend. When questioned about their non attendance, all of the individuals said they were too busy to attend and it was a matter of going to the classes or getting the work done. What action should the manager take in this situation?Correct Answer: In consideration of the fact that these are the initial training sessions, sit down with each of the affected employees and very specifically tell them that the classes are mandatory and that they must attend under penalty of disciplinary action.Discussion: The manager knows that the compliance policy is mandatory attendance for these training sessions and informed these employees of that fact. When taking the disciplinary action, the manager may take into account the fact that these employees have not received the training and therefore may not understand the implications of not attending, but the some appropriate discipline should be taken. The manager should also give some consideration to the mentality that caused these employees to skip the training in the first place even after being instructed to attend. This same kind of decision process, the work must get done, is a common cause of compliance problems occurring. | View Page |
| Case Study 2 A courier is making a routine stop in a client's office and is approached by the office manager with whom he is very friendly because he has been going to this office for years. The office manager asks the courier if Dr. John Smith is a regular stop on his route and the courier answers yes. She then asks the courier if he would do her a little favor since he stops at Dr Smiths office regularly anyway and drop off an x-ray for her so she won't have to call a courier service. The courier knows that this is a big account for the laboratory and customer service is a high priority for the laboratory. This courier should:Correct Answer: Refuse to do it for the customer and explain to the customer that the laboratory has a policy that says he must only provide courier services related to laboratory.Discussion: Even though this is a single incident, by doing this favor the courier is giving the office manager license to ask these kinds of favors in the future. Since the provision of this free courier service is a form of inducement or kickback to the client, both the client and the laboratory would be involved if the such a practice were to go on regularly and be discovered by the government or by the laboratory. Hiding the incident and asking the office manager to conspire with him to do this will only make it worse for the employee and would lead to serious discipline action up to termination. The courier's best course of action, for the protection of his friend the office manager and himself, the physician practice and the laboratory is to not do this and explain the reason to the office manager so she is aware of the consequences of asking this favor.
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