As we re-examine the healthcare system in the wake of the pandemic, we are continually identifying opportunities to rebuild parts of the system to new and improved specifications. One critical facet is digital health, where we continue to struggle with what should really be table stakes: the ability to integrate data from disparate organizations and systems into a unified view of the whole person and take action. During the height of the pandemic, telehealth made it possible to deliver care
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Despite COVID-19: Providers Should Not Lose Sight of MIPS Compliance
When 2020 began, no one anticipated that complying with the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS)—the flagship payment model of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Quality Payment Program (QPP)—would look so different halfway through the year. Like many other things, the COVID-19 crisis has delayed, diverted, or derailed many organizations’ reporting efforts and capabilities. Lower procedure volumes, new remote work scenarios, and shifting priorities have taken attention
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5 Steps for Interoperability Excellence for Healthcare Providers
As if 2020 couldn’t be any more challenging for healthcare providers, new federal rules on interoperability and patient access, granting patients direct access to their healthcare data, begin taking effect in 2021 and will continue into 2022. These rules, while ultimately beneficial to patients, bring an additional level of operational complexity to many revenue-stressed healthcare organizations. If anything, the 2020 pandemic has illustrated the vast potential of interoperability. For
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HHS Extends Compliance Dates for Information Blocking Requirements
What You Should Know: - HHS released an interim final rule to extend compliance dates and timeframes to meet information blocking beyond those identified in April 21, 2020, enforcement discretion announcement and establishes new future applicability dates for information blocking provisions. - The interim final rule also adopts updated standards
and makes technical corrections and clarifications to the ONC Cures Act Final
Rule. Today the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services’
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HHS Announces Investments for STAR HIE Program to Support State and Local Public Health Agencies
What You Should Know: - HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) will award up to five 5 cooperative
agreements under the Strengthening
the Technical Advancement and Readiness of Public Health Agencies via Health Information Exchange
(STAR HIE) Program. The U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS) today issued a Notice of Funding Opportunity to expand and
accelerate innovative
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HHS Taps Fenway Health as Pilot Site for Precision Medicine Project
What You Should Know: - Fenway
Health has been selected as the pilot site to participate in the Advancing
Standards for Precision Medicine (ASPM) project. - The ASPM project
is focused on how healthcare providers can systematically identify the
socio-economic factors that may impact the health of patients in order to
provide more individualized care that reflects patients’ needs. Fenway Health, a
Boston, MA-based Federally Qualified Community Health Center (FQCHC)
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ONC, The Sequoia Project Continue RCE Efforts to Support Nationwide HIE
The Sequoia Project, selected by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) as the Recognized Coordinating Entity (RCE) to support the implementation of the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA), today celebrated program achievements and ONC’s announcement of the availability of approximately $1.1M of funding to continue the public-private engagement for a second year.Progress to DateIn 2019, ONC chose non-profit The Sequoia Project, to be the RCE following a
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COVID-19 Crisis Makes Complying with Data Interoperability a Priority
With healthcare organizations focused on battling COVID-19, the recent federal healthcare regulation requiring data interoperability may have become an afterthought. However, compliance with this rule will create a powerful tool for fighting COVID-19 recurrences and future pandemics. If interoperability had gone into effect earlier this year as originally scheduled, many insurance companies and the federal government would now be able to securely share the data they have for most of the
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Apervita Launches Deep Encryption Tech to Stop Payer, Provider Cyber Threats
What You Should Know: - Apervita establishes first cloud-based healthcare platform for payers and providers to offer deep encryption of health data. - Additionally, Apervita’s Deep Encryption feature meets requirements of the Office of the National Coordinator’s (ONC) recent Information Blocking final rule, which calls for granular, PHI field-level privacy to support data segmentation, while still allowing for data to be accessible. Apervita, the leading
platform for value-based
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Op-Ed: Health Care Is Too Important To Stay The Same
Virtually every business around the globe is contending with how to improve the consumer experience in an era of digitization. We live in a world where you can calculate the fastest route to your destination, order dinner to be delivered, have groceries loaded into your fridge, and livestream content from around the world – all from the palm of your hand. So why have we not seen the same strides in health care? In part, because of the inability of patients to access and control their own
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