MBAs Help Hospital Meet U.S. Regs

St. Peter's Hospital's Philip Kahn meets with MBA students Megan Easterly (left) and Stacia Armentano to discuss new federal standards

Megan Easterly and Stacia Armentano arrived at work at St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany first thing every Friday morning in the Spring of 2003, helping to ensure the future of the hospital’s medical operations.

They did so without extensive backgrounds in medicine or biology. The duo, second-year UAlbany Master’s of Business Administration (MBA) students, helped St. Peter’s meet three broad compliance standards required by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

Under the guidance of Philip Kahn, St. Peter’s Chief Information Officer, they compared HIPAA requirements to actual hospital practices, indicated where St. Peter’s needed to improve, and lent a hand in making those improvements.
“We wouldn’t be anywhere without them,” said Kahn of the half dozen UAlbany MBAs that have participated in the project over the last three years. “They have been instrumental in helping us comply with both the HIPPA Transactions & Code Set Standards and Privacy & Security Standards.”

The healthcare industry in general has moved slowly on compliance, largely because its first concern is always serving those in medical need and in making ends meet while doing so. The silver lining to the HIPAA regulations is that the standards will ultimately save healthcare providers’ time and money.

In helping St. Peters with the Transactions & Code Set Standards, the MBA students set up an electronic data interchange system that standardizes the way patient-identifiable health information is transmitted electronically. The standardization rules apply to nine types of administrative and financial healthcare transactions used by payers, physicians and other providers, including claims and coordination of benefits. The compliance deadline is Oct. 16, 2003.

With HIPAA’s Privacy & Security Standards, the MBA students played a less technical and more advisory role. “The standards require that St. Peter’s maintain a project management team to gather information as to where the facility stands in regard to privacy issues and where it needs to be,” said Armentano.

“The hospital also has to make recommendations on how it will get to that point. That’s what we have helped with, by studying the HIPAA guidelines and working with the St. Peter’s staff.” She noted that staff training began in January of 2003 and was completed for all employees by HIPAA’s privacy and security standards deadline of April 14, 2003.

“The students identified areas where we needed improvement,” said Kahn, “and they helped us to maintain that improvement by setting up an internet database of rules and regulations and of policies and procedures.”

The benefit, of course,was reciprocal. “The MBA training has given us a basic foundation for assessing gaps that exist between current policies and procedures and where an organization needs to go,” said Armentano.

For the past three years, healthcare-related field projects have been a growing concentration within the MBA program. Completed and ongoing student efforts include a Web-based discharge-planning tool for the region’s senior providers; a pharmaceutical formulary for physicians on call at Albany Medical Center (AMC); and a clinical trials database and website for AMC’s Cancer Center.

“The required coursework that these students undertake provides them with the analytical tools to effectively define and solve the client’s problems,” said Peter Ross, who directs MBA healthcare fieldwork in the School of Business.

“This is particularly important for a healthcare provider with respect to HIPAA, where the organization is responding to multiple stakeholders – including the board, the government, the employees, and the patients.”