The HITECH Act, which was enacted as part of ARRA, promotes the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology. Subtitle D of the HITECH Act addresses the privacy and security concerns associated with the electronic transmission of health information. While the HITECH Act mirrors HIPAA, it elaborates with specific requirements
If your hospital is notified by CMS that is auditing your organization's  Meaningful Use (MU) attestation you will need a clear action plan and the advice of experienced people who…
Experts to Review Electronic Health Care Innovation, Regulations and Mobile Health at Scripps, April 17th A group of companies will participate in a comprehensive discussion on the current and future…
Finally, uncertainty about ICD-10 is lifted. "...rule changes the compliance date for the ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS medical data code sets (hereinafter "code sets") from October 1, 2013 to October 1, 2014."
If The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is repealed it will be interesting to see if it is repealed in whole or in part. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) may excise the individual mandate requiring health insurance coverage, or it could strike it down entirely.
One of the key questions will be how the EMR provides a foundation with the Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) for comparative effectiveness data over the life span of a patient (sometimes called the continuum of care) and whether CDA standards currently proposed will accomplish that. Informatics people call this "longitudinal clinical data."
Health care providers should ensure that the EMR vendor is on track toward ICD-10 compliance, however they should not rely on their EMR vendor as the panacea. Most hospital systems we work with have many more ancillary systems in radiology, etc. that are also impacted, and the EMR isn't the core system of record (yet) for everything that goes on in a hospital.
ICD-10 implementations must move forward despite Presidential campaign promises to repeal 'Omabacare' or the Affordable Care Act. As Business Week pointed out this week, repealing the Accountable Care Act is not that easy. And even if it were repealed ICD-10 is a HIPAA mandate that was enacted prior to President Omaba's election in August 2008. Hospital systems should push ahead on ICD-10 Assessments, ICD-10 Implementation Plans, and get ready for the shift to ICD-10-CM which includes many more diagnosis codes than ICD-9. ICD-10 PCS also include many more procedure codes than ICD-9.
We find that most analytics and revenue cycle companies are ignoring the future role coordinated medical coding will have, the transition to ICD-10, and the clinical documentation and processes on the revenue cycle. The ICD-10 transition will re-write the book on revenue cycle management (RCM). RAC audits and Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) will be subject to a new paradigm with ICD-10.
Here is a summary of lessons learned from the Canadian experience with ICD-10 implementations and also importantly where the two implementations differ.
Modifications to the HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Enforcement Rules Under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is issued…
Update on federal and state health care reform, key provisions, 60 votes secured in Senate. Cost estimates and cost savings debate, key state by state updates.