Pat Brooks, RHIA, Sr. Technical Advisor at the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced today during this week's ICD-10 Summit that the ICD-9 code freeze, orginally scheduled for October, 1 2014 will be extended one year
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Healthcare Policy Regulation & Reform | News, Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Pre-Reform Impact of Self-Pay Patients on US Hospitals
Pre-reform, many hospitals experience significant uncompensated care costs from self-pay patients. The following infographic from Objective Health illustrates the variation in self-pay uncompensated care costs across US hospitals and regions.
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Physician-Patient-Communication Infographic
From Verilogue's collection of over 70,000 physician-patient communication comes a new infographic depicting the communication statistics of patients, caregivers and their physicians.
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Importance of Healthcare Providers Improving Their CDI Program
Guest post from Alice Zentner, Director of Auditing and Education for TrustHCS:
Many providers have CDI programs. The belief is that more accurate, detailed clinical documentation is better for the patient, the institution, the government, researchers, and all aspects of quality of care. So why not have an improvement program for the improvement program?
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Video:Understanding NLP Technology with 3M
Imminent delay of ICD-10 has not stopped the healthcare providers who have the foresight to charge ahead in their preparation for ICD-10. One of the biggest components that would assist healthcare organizations in that preparation for ICD-10 is purchasing a Computer Assisted Coding software product. One of the key components of a computer assisted coding product is it's Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology that provides the ability to highlight code-able terms in the patient record by
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5 ICD-10 Steps that Deliver Collateral Benefit for ICD-9
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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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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