Are Sign-In Sheets Important? And Legal?
Patient disputes can put your practice at risk. HIPAA allows sign-in sheets with minimal info, giving you critical proof of visits. Protect your documentation and be ready when claims are challenged.
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Transcript:
So what do you do when that patient who was in your practice suddenly claims that they never were there, that you were billing for services that you didn’t render? They call the insurance company, and they claim that you didn’t actually do the work that you did do. Unfortunately, there was a lot of confusion surrounding HIPAA early on, and a lot of doctors got rid of their sign-in forms, got rid of other things. Got rid of their sign-in sheets that had a list of patients’ names, and so proving that a patient was actually there with their signature and their date and things like that that are very specific to that patient is very difficult. Then it really just comes down to your documentation that clearly demonstrates that they were there, right? Except for you don’t have their signature.
Here is the actual facts. HHS, the Health and Human Services, does allow for you to keep sign-in sheets. In other words, you can have a sign-in sheet for that patient that allows them to sign their name, date it that they were there, and then hang on to that document to have clear evidence that the patient was in your practice. In fact, I’ll include a link down below to a specific HHS FAQ page where the question is asked: May physicians’ offices use patient sign-in sheets or call out the names of their patients in their waiting rooms? And their answer, the very first word is yes, and then they go on to give additional information.
So here’s that information. You want to make sure that what is on that sign-in sheet is minimal. So you don’t want to have, you know, here’s your sign-in sheet, print your name, you know, sign in, print your name, and then list your condition. That’s going too far. It has to be the minimal amount of information necessary to have them sign in. So you could have them sign their name, the date, of course, and then also the time that they came in, so you have that also documented, if you’d like to have that for your records. If you really don’t care about the time that they were in, then make sure that they do sign it and date it. That is a minimal amount of information, and it can be person after person after person after person. And then you make sure that they do it.
Now, some of you have the tear-off sheets or the tear-off stickers or whatever the case might be; those are fine as well, but the fact of the matter is that you are able to have just a simple sign-in sheet. In fact, I would still recommend that we had a doctor recently call, and they had an issue where a patient was adamant that they were not there. They called the insurance carrier. They did this, but that doctor had eliminated the sign-in sheets because that’s what they were taught early on with HIPAA, and so they just let that continue throughout the course of time. But HHS does allow it. The statute does allow you to keep sign-in sheets.
So you do want to document, have clear documentation, patient signature, and date that they were there in your practice to demonstrate if this need were to ever to come up. Hopefully, it never does, but let’s be prepared for those opportunities or for those problems when, or if they ever do, occur. Hopefully, this helps you out. We’ll catch you next week.
