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AHIA E-News is the electronic newsletter for AHIA members,
offering up-to-date information on a variety of issues pertaining to the
healthcare internal audit industry and AHIA events. Please watch your inbox
for updates, news, and event information.
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From the Chair
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Teammates,
I hope you are enjoying the summer and find time to celebrate your successes
with family and friends. Your teammates in the association have been busy on
a number of fronts. The annual conference plans are in place and all we need
is your presence to assure a great event in San Diego! Webinars and regional
events continue to be a concentration for educational additions. We are
looking at social networking opportunities. You continue to submit new
materials for the AHIA library which I highly encourage, and thank you for
your generosity. Share your ideas and get involved. It will help us all
improve.
"Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude." (Ralph Marston)
Mark Eddy
Chairman of the Board
AHIA
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2009 Annual Conference
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Join your colleagues for the educational
event of the year. Mark your calendar for August 31–September 2, 2009
in San Diego, California and take this opportunity to reserve your spot.
Register
Now!
 Reserve your room at the San
Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina. The discounted room rate for the
Annual Conference is $218 for single/double occupancy plus applicable
taxes. To receive this special rate, you must identify yourself as an AHIA
attendee.
To make reservations, call 1.800.228.9290 by August 8th.
Conference Schedule
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2009 Elections
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The Board of Directors recently approved Joyce Lang of
Legacy Health and Vickie Patterson of Protiviti, recommended by the
Nominating committee, as candidates for the Officer Track position in the
2009 election. Detailed information about the candidates will be available
when voting opens later this fall.
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Name Our New Baby!
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It's all
in the Name—E-news Survey
We need your help with naming AHIA's soon-to-be-announced
listserv dedicated to software that you use to do your job. AHIA is planning
to initiate a separate listserv for members to ask questions, get answers,
and share ideas around the use of technology tools such as MS Access, ACL, MS
Excel, IDEA and others. These tools may include or be used for spreadsheet
routines, continuous monitoring applications, data base analysis, data
mining, data extraction, reporting and other purposes to make sense of the
large amounts of data that we increasingly encounter in our audits of
clinical, operational, financial, and other healthcare related processes and
systems.
Where we need your help is with a unique, catchy name to
differentiate this list serve from our regular, all-purpose list serve. We
need a name that captures all of the foregoing in a few simple words (no easy
task).
Please take our very quick survey
and help choose a name for our new baby!
We plan to launch the new listserv at the upcoming annual conference in San
Diego. Be there to celebrate the arrival of this unique member service.
Choose the Baby's Name
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Member Survey
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AHIA is constantly looking to obtain information that you will
find interesting and useful as a healthcare internal auditor. As a result, we
are conducting regular, short, member surveys in E-News. We value your
participation.
This month's survey is announced above.
Click
here to view the results from last month's audit internal audit
opinions survey.
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2009 Audit Library Campaign
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AHIA congratulates Christopher Boutin from Baystate
Health, winner of the $200 prize for this month's audit library contest!
A hearty thank you also goes to the other AHIA members who submitted
documents.
Non-Board-member names will be added to the drawing for grand prizes to be
held in September.
To pique your interest and add even more value to the audit
library, we are targeting specific topics each month. No documents that
relate to the topic? No problem, you can still submit.
June/July Topics
HIPAA Privacy
This month we are specifically looking for audit programs, internal control
questionnaires, reports, or other audit tools related to HIPAA Privacy
audits. Please share with your colleagues what you have done in this area.
HIPAA Security
We should have been performing HIPAA Security reviews for many years by now,
so everyone should have an Audit Program. Looking at the basic regulation,
you should "see" some 42 audit steps; some of us must have
elaborated on those basics. Please share what you have used; all of us should
then be able to develop a good HIPPA Security Review.
HITECH
Or, as some call it, HIPPA Phase II, just passed in February 2009, but with a
much quicker implementation window. The basic thrust of HITECH is breach
notification, enhanced enforcement (now by State Attorneys General), with
significantly enhanced fines and full legal liability to the hospital for
breaches by our Business Associates (and hence the need to strengthen the
Business Associate contract wording).
Many of you will have developed Draft Audit Programs. If even a half dozen of
us submit our Drafts, the rest should be able to combine them into a workable
tool.
If there is a specific topic you would like to see included in the library,
drop a line to the tech committee at auditlibrary@ahia.org.
Submit your documents for the June contest to auditlibrary@ahia.org
by June 30th. Click on the links to view the submission guidelines, or the contest details.
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Quick Links...
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