Category: Healthcare Industry News
Can Full EHR Adoption Decrease Adverse Patient Safety Events?
Date: February 15th, 2016Source: HealthIT AnalyticsTopics: EHRs, Patient CareElectronic health records haven’t always had a spotless reputation when it comes to patient care, but the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) believes that a comprehensive EHR adoption program can, in fact, slash the number of adverse patient safety events that occur in the inpatient setting.
Read MoreAccountable Care Organization EHR, HIE Use by the Numbers
Date: February 10th, 2016Source: EHR IntelligenceTopics: HIE, EHRs, Accountable CareEHR and health information exchange technology have important roles to play in ensuring that accountable care organizations can coordinate care for patient populations.
Read MoreSAMHSA Proposes Major Changes to Federal Substance Abuse Privacy Rule
Date: February 9th, 2016Source: National Law ReviewTopics: Behavioral Health, HIPAAAlmost thirty years after the last substantive change to the federal regulations governing the confidentiality of alcohol and drug abuse patient records, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) today published a proposed rule (Proposed Rule) to modernize the regulations at 42 CFR Part 2 (the Part 2 Rule). Public comment period on the Proposed Rule is open until April 11, 2016. - See more at: http://www.natlawreview.com/article/samhsa-proposes-major-changes-to-federal-substance-abuse-privacy-rule#sthash.SXpJZqEA.dpuf
Read More80% of REC Primary Care Providers Succeeded at Meaningful Use
Date: February 5th, 2016Source: EHR IntelligenceTopics: Meaningful Use, Regional Extension CenterNearly 80 percent of all regional extension center (REC) primary care providers have attested to meaningful use for the EHR Incentive Programs as of the beginning of this year, according to data from the Office of the National Coordination for Health IT (ONC).
Read MoreHealthcare providers weigh pros, cons of Merit-Based Incentive Payment System
Date: February 4th, 2016Source: Healthcare IT NewsTopics: MACRA, Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), Accountable CareMany providers are at a crossroads right now: Either join an accountable care organization or be placed into Medicare’s Merit-Based Incentive Payment System. Set to begin in 2017, MIPS uses value-based modifiers to rank providers by quality and is expected to fold together with meaningful use, essentially merging the current pay-for-performance models under one umbrella.
Read MoreHow EHRs can improve planning for emergency care 'frequent fliers'
Date: February 4th, 2016Source: FierceEMRTopics: EHRs, Value-Based Care, Emergency ServicesMedicaid "frequent flier" patients to the emergency department have different characteristics than infrequent ED visitors, which call for different strategies, according to research published by Big Data.
Read MoreCMS Announces Significant Changes to the MSSP Program Via a New Proposed Rule
Date: January 29th, 2016Source: Healthcare InformaticsTopics: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Value-Based Care, Accountable CareOfficials at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) took a significant step in changing some of the requirements for accountable care organizations (ACOs) under the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) for ACOs, on Thursday, Jan. 28.
Read MoreNearly 75% of Physicians Have Certified EHRs
Date: January 29th, 2016Source: MedscapeTopics: HIE, EHRsThe percentage of office-based physicians who had a certified electronic health record (EHR) system increased to 74.1% in 2014 from 67.5% in 2013, according to a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), published online January 27.
Read MoreCMS proposes changes to ACO benchmarks
Date: January 28th, 2016Source: Modern HealthcareTopics: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Value-Based Care, Accountable CareThe CMS is proposing changes to the way it evaluates whether accountable care organizations in the Medicare Shared Savings Program actually save money. The CMS wants to move away from assessing ACO benchmarks based on historical spending and instead use trends in regional fee-for-service costs.
Read MoreHealth Care's Price Conundrum
Date: January 26th, 2016Source: The New YorkerTopics: Value-Based Care, Provider Reimbursement, Accountable CareThe more expensive it is, the better it must be. That’s how people used to think about health-care costs. As has become apparent in recent years, however, this is flat wrong. The costs of care vary wildly depending on where you live—by three hundred per cent or more, as I reported in “The Cost Conundrum,” in 2009. And research has found no consistent relationship between cost and quality across the country. Some of the most expensive places are among the most mediocre.
Read MoreHow Accountable Care Impacts Population Health Management
Date: January 26th, 2016Source: HealthIT AnalyticsTopics: Meaningful Use, Value-Based Care, Medical Home Model, Accountable CareAlong with big data analytics tools, accountable care and population health management make up the three critical branches of healthcare reform. It’s no secret that value-based reimbursement and population health management go hand-in-hand as two of the primary drivers of quality reform, but it hasn’t always been easy to get providers to embrace the risk involved in making the transition into accountable care arrangements.
Read MoreWhat are the Biggest Population Health Management Pain Points?
Date: January 22nd, 2016Source: HealthIT AnalyticsTopics: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Interoperability, Population Health, Data AnalyticsPopulation health management, health data interoperability, and accountable care may take first, second, and third place on the list of pressing priorities for the healthcare industry, but that doesn’t mean they are having an easy time of enacting the meaningful, measurable, patient-driven changes that are supposed to drive quality improvements and bring more revenue into provider organizations.
Read MoreCMS Releases Details on Meaningful Use Hardship Exceptions
Date: January 22nd, 2016Source: MedscapeTopics: Meaningful Use, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid ServicesThe Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) today supplied details about the changes in meaningful use hardship exceptions required under the Patient Access and Medicare Protection Act (PAMPA). Enacted December 28, 2015, this law requires CMS to make it easier for physicians and hospitals to request hardship exceptions from the payment adjustments to their Medicare reimbursement in 2017.
Read MoreInteroperability hurdles impede ACOs
Date: January 20th, 2016Source: Modern HealthcareTopics: Interoperability, Behavioral Health, Accountable CareFor accountable care organizations, a lack of interoperability between their health information technology systems and those of providers outside their ACO is the No. 1 challenge they face, cited by 79% of respondents to a survey of 68 ACOs by group purchaser and performance-improvement company Premier and health IT collaborative eHealth Initiative.
Read MoreEHR Incentive Programs: Where We Go Next
Date: January 19th, 2016Source: CMS BlogTopics: Meaningful Use, MACRA, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS)As we mentioned in a speech last week, the Administration is working on an important transition for the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program. We have been working side by side with physician organizations and have listened to the needs and concerns of many about how we can make improvements that will allow technology to best support clinicians and their patients. While we will be putting out additional details in the next few months, we wanted to provide an update today.
Read MoreIs Becoming an ACO the Right Choice For You?
Date: January 15th, 2016Source: RCM AnswersTopics: Transformation Support Services, Value-Based Care, Accountable CareOne of the key concepts to rise out of the turbulent past decade in the healthcare industry is the Accountable Care Organization (ACO). In the ACO model, private and government payers offer the opportunity for financial incentives to groups of providers to encourage them to come together voluntarily to deliver high quality while keeping costs down.
Read MoreContinuity of care documents bridge gaps
Date: January 15th, 2016Source: Behavioral HealthcareTopics: Care Coordination, Care SummariesCreated by a standards development organization, the CCD is a standardized document template for transferring patient information between care settings. In theory, the same information could be transferred by paper documents. But in the digital infrastructure, modern EHRs are designed to generate CCDs that compile an agreed-upon core data set of relevant administrative, demographic and clinical information in a patient’s record for transmission.
Read MoreCMS Gets “Deadly Serious” About Interoperability as MU Fades
Date: January 14th, 2016Source: HealthIT AnalyticsTopics: EHRs, Meaningful Use, MACRA, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS)Slavitt wants providers to know that CMS isn’t just listening, but is taking action on the critical issue of health data exchange after a long year in which protests against a lack of health data interoperability forced some vendors to change their tune on HIE fees and data ownership questions.
Read MoreHow Eligible Providers Performed in Stage 2 Meaningful Use
Date: January 12th, 2016Source: EHR IntelligenceTopics: EHRs, Meaningful UseDespite resistance to Stage 2 Meaningful Use requirements, tens of thousands of eligible providers successfully demonstrated meaningful use and here's how they did.
Read MoreAdjusting for social determinants in value-based payments still fuzzy
Date: January 12th, 2016Source: Modern HealthcareTopics: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Accountable Care, Patient Care, Quality ImprovementThere's no question that race, gender, socio-economic status and health literacy influence a patient's healthcare access, cost and outcomes. But what's still fuzzy is an understanding of which factors are within a provider's control, and how to adjust for these factors in value-based payments, a new report says
Read MorePhysician EHR Use Benefits Quality Performance, Productivity
Date: January 11th, 2016Source: EHR IntelligenceTopics: EHRs, Meaningful UseNearly 83 percent of health IT users have seen some kind of quality performance benefit in physician EHR use, according to a recent survey from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).
Read MorePrecision medicine growth hinges on electronic health records
Date: January 7th, 2016Source: Healthcare IT NewsTopics: EHRs, Patient Care, Data AnalyticsAdvancements in genomic research have given medical professionals the ability to create highly detailed physiological profiles of individuals as well as a baseline for predicting the impact of genes on disease. And the catalyst for putting genomic principles into practice is the electronic health record, says researcher David Crockett.
Read MoreNew EHR law offers providers and CMS some flexibility
Date: January 4th, 2016Source: Modern HealthcareTopics: EHRs, Meaningful Use, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid ServicesA bill signed into law last month gave the CMS, hospitals, physicians and other eligible professionals, more flexibility in filing and processing exemptions from the meaningful-use requirements of the federal EHR incentive payment program.
Read MoreObama Signs Law Giving Providers Patient Data MU Exemptions
Date: December 30th, 2015Source: Information ManagementTopics: Meaningful UsePresident Obama on Monday signed into law the Patient Access and Medicare Protection Act, which makes it easier for eligible professionals and hospitals to apply for hardship exemptions from Meaningful Use electronic health record requirements.In particular, the law provides EPs and EHs with relief from financial penalties for failing to meet Stage 2 MU requirements this year, ensuring that providers have “flexibility in applying the hardship exception for Meaningful Use for the 2015 EHR reporting period for 2017 payment adjustments.”
Read MoreCMS Details MACRA, MIPS Accountable Care Quality Metrics
Date: December 22nd, 2015Source: HealthIT AnalyticsTopics: MACRA, Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS)CMS is bringing the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) one step closer to its 2019 implementation date by providing the industry with a timeline for the development of quality metrics and other measures that will gauge provider performance and reimbursement adjustments.
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