Guest post from Torrey Barnhouse, CEO of TrustHCS providing 5 ICD-10 steps that can deliver collateral benefit for ICD-9 While at HIMSS 2012, TrustHCS had the honor of sponsoring an executive roundtable on ICD-10. During the roundtable, speakers discussed five ICD-10 projects that should be continued, full steam ahead, despite the delay. It’s a good list and worth sharing. In general, the panel’s advice was to identify ICD-10 tasks that have collateral benefit for ICD-9 coding. These are
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Healthcare Policy Regulation & Reform | News, Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
HHS Issues Final Rule on State Health Insurance Exchanges
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today published the final rule that will assist states in building more affordable health insurance exchanges. Beginning in 2014, one stop marketplaces called Exchanges will be operational, enabling consumers and small business to select a private health insurance plan and offer the public the same kinds of insurance choices as members of Congress. The exchanges will help level the playing field and drive down costs with health insurers
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Seniors are Losing Billions of Dollars Buried in Unused Benefits from Medicare and Other Agencies
Guest post by Peggy Gavan According to a report released by the National Council on Aging (NCOA) and National Association of Area Agencies on Aging (n4a), millions of low-income older adults are missing out on over $20 billion in free and low-cost support that could help pay for health care, prescriptions, food, and utilities. The main reason why seniors are not taking advantage of these resources? They simply don’t know the money is there for them. In response to this disconnect, the
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The Proposed Rule for Stage 2 Meaningful Use NPRM Now Available
The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for Stage 2 meaningful use was posted to the Office of the Federal Register today. The proposed rule outlines the next stage of meaningful use for the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs, which are administered by CMS. CMS has developed a fact sheet to give providers an overview of the rule and how Stage 2 expands upon Stage 1 of meaningful use. The fact sheet can be found on the EHR Incentive Programs website
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Infographic:Healthcare’s Data Conundrum
Infographic explores how healthcare's data conundrum can be used to make the capture, understanding, & utilization of data possible to improve patient care With the electronic health record adoption rates rising and the push for a personalized and interactive approach to medicine becomes more prevalent, there is an opportunity for our healthcare system to transform from an inefficient machine into a well-oiled producer of actionable, meaningful information. And this opportunity begins at
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CMS Announces Re-Examination of Timeline for ICD-10 – Is the Pressure Off?
The following is a guest post from Doug Hires, Partner, Consulting & Advisory Services at Santa Rosa Consulting, Inc. on the possible ICD-10 timeline delay. Many of you have likely read or heard this week that the acting CMS Administrator, Marilyn Tavenner, announced to the press following an AMA Advocacy Conference that CMS will "re-examine the timeframe" through a rulemaking process. She did not say when that rulemaking process will begin but said that CMS would send details about the
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Report:PPACA Would Reduce Number of Uninsured from 50 million to 26 million
In a recent report published last month by the Urban Institute and Robert Johnson Foundation states that if the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is enacted, it would reduce the number of nonelderly uninsured Americans from 50 million to 26 million. However, if the Individual Mandate clause of the PPACA is repealed, the number of uninsured Americans will rise between 40 and 42 million. The report also states that ACA would increase private insurance by 7 million people and if
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Video:Is Technology Changing the Doctor-Patient Relationship?
With preventable medical conditions such as obesity continuing to grow so does the need for patient involved healthcare. The doctor-patient relationship is critically important to bridging the gap between passive patients and informed medical consumers. Innovative technologies are the enabling factor for this, but are they succeeding — and how long will it be before we start seeing significant changes? The following video explores this question with moderator, Zachary Bujnoch, Senior Industry
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Race to the ICD-10 Finish Line Infographic
Infographic highlighting that ICD-10 is almost two Years Away and healthcare organizations must have a plan in order to race to the ICD-10 Finish Line *Update: CMS has officially delayed ICD-10 to October 1, 2014 With the AMA writing yet another letter, this time to the HHS in hopes of stopping ICD-10. There are no current plans to stop ICD-10 implementation; therefore, with less than one year away, healthcare providers must race to meet the 10/1/13 compliance date. The following
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AMA Continues Onslaught of ICD-10
The AMA(American Medical Association) has upped the stakes in the fight against ICD-10 recently writing a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to stop HIPAA’s required implementation of ICD-10 and to call on stakeholders to assess an appropriate replacement for ICD-9. AMA is stating that the implementation of ICD-10 will create no additional burdens on the practice of medicine and have no direct benefit to individual patient care, as physicians struggle with other costly transitions associating
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