Hospital observation status: The truth must come out
The observation status problem has continued to grow both larger and worse.
My hospitalist colleagues and I are caring for patients in hospital beds in the exact same way as other patients in the hospital, but we are told that we must give them the designation called observation status. CMS recognizes observation status as outpatient care, like seeing a patient in a walk-in clinic.
We don’t decide to make a patient observation …
