CAP is committed to helping our member physicians meet the challenges that arise during the COVID-19 pandemic. To that end, CAP has launched our COVID-19 resource page, which will continually be revised with key guidance and current best practices. Among the useful resources the site currently offers are printable office signage templates, healthcare provider resources, and extensive guidance to implementing telemedicine in your practice.

CAP member physicians frequently call our hotline with questions about completing a patient’s death certificate.  Sometimes, they are reluctant to sign the legal document since they were not in attendance at the time of death. Other times, they inquire if their nurse practitioner or physician assistant can sign the death certificate for them.

To describe homelessness as a “complicating factor” in healthcare is a gross understatement; the homeless die nearly three decades earlier than the general population and their health challenges are innumerable.ⁱ Addiction, mental illness, malnutrition, exposure to a host of infectious diseases related to overcrowding, poor hygiene, a lack of sanitation and IV drug use as well as the threat of violence, routinely undermine the health and wellbeing of this population.  For the homeless, healthcare access is at best-episodic and is often driven by the need for urgent treatment.

In our latest data study, CAP Risk Management staff evaluated 68 closed claims radiology cases that resulted in an indemnity payment between 2006 and 2015. Through claims analysis, we have identified areas to improve the medical diagnostic process. 

Most, if not all, physicians and medical personnel understand that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a federal law designed to provide privacy standards to protect patients’ medical records and other health information. However, many fail to recognize that they might not be in compliance with federal privacy laws enacted since HIPAA, which updated regulations and created new standards.