Recently, The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) 301-page proposed rules for Stage 3 of the Meaningful Use program. Under the proposal, beginning in 2018, no matter the level of previous participation, users would report on Stage 3 with the option to start using it in 2017.
By Lawrence G | May 5, 2015 | Electronic Medical Records News, Healthcare Laws and Regulations |
Ranking well below the national average of 69%, a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report show that only 38.7% of New Jersey doctors are accepting new Medicaid patients in 2013, making New Jersey the lowest ranking state (the 2011/2012 survey placed New Jersey at 46%, still at the bottom). California comes in second at 54.2% while New Jersey neighboring states of New York,
By Lawrence G | April 28, 2015 | Healthcare News |
On March 26th the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation (with a 392-37 vote) to permanently replace the Medicare sustainable growth rate formula and reimbursement mechanism. The senate did not review the bill before its 2 week recess. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said that the Senate will act quickly on the legislation when the session resumes on April 13 stating,
By Lawrence G | April 14, 2015 | Healthcare Laws and Regulations, Healthcare News |
With three more healthcare security breaches recently reported, the issue of security is again in the forefront of healthcare news. In a new report from CyberEdge Group, 52% of security professionals say their organization will likely be successfully attacked in the next year. The number of actual reported hacks continues to increase with some 16% reporting multiple attacks.
By Lawrence G | April 7, 2015 | Healthcare IT, Healthcare News |
Groups including American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Academy of Family Physicians recently wrote to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) voicing their concerns stating that “the transition to ICD-10 represents one of the largest technical, operational, and business implementations in the health care industry in the past several decades” and arguing that there needs to be industry wide end-to-end testing as the current testing shows results only for a broad overview of claims.
By Lawrence G | March 24, 2015 | Healthcare Laws and Regulations, Healthcare News |
A draft bill is being circulated among Congress that outlines a plan for achieving interoperability (the ability of any authorized user to read a medical record from any source) by year 2018. This bill is Rep. Mike Burgess’ (R-Texas) plan to appoint a 12 member committee to help develop standards and stop Electronic Health Record (EHR) software from blocking other interfaces.
By Lawrence G | March 17, 2015 | Healthcare Laws and Regulations, Healthcare News |
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently conducted a week long test wherein 660 volunteer Medicare fee-for-service providers, clearing houses and billing companies submitted about 15,000 test claims, and Administrator Marilyn Tavenner says CMS is ready. Of the claims submit 56% were from professionals, 38% were from institutions and 6% were supplier claims.
The goal of the test is to have providers successfully submit claims using ICD-10 codes to the Medicare Fee-For Service (FFS) claims systems,
By Lawrence G | March 13, 2015 | Healthcare Laws and Regulations, Healthcare News |
March 20th is now the deadline date set for 2014 Meaningful Use Attestation. The date was originally set at February 28th, but Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) extended the deadline to allow providers more time to gather and submit their data. During this extension period, providers an also utilize their one “switch” from Medicare to Medicaid or Vice Versa.
By Lawrence G | March 10, 2015 | Electronic Medical Records News, Healthcare Laws and Regulations, Healthcare News |
mHealth is an abbreviation for mobile health, a term used for the practice of medicine and public health supported by mobile devices. The term is most commonly used in reference to using mobile communication devices for health services and information and includes technology such as apps (applications), wearables and cloud services. The market for these technologies is growing and as more options become available,
By Lawrence G | March 2, 2015 | Healthcare IT |
Weaknesses in cyber security surely exist and the recent Anthem breach has many believing that this is just the start of an awful trend. As well as the actual medical and miscellaneous personal information, social security numbers and financial information (for payment to providers) are all in one place – providing the winning trifecta for hackers.
By Lawrence G | February 24, 2015 | Electronic Medical Records News, Healthcare IT, Healthcare News |
