By Tee Green – The healthcare industry has done a remarkable job of replacing traditional paper charts with electronic health records (EHRs). Information that used to be sharable only by the most rudimentary means — it’s been said that fax machines lasted so long only because of healthcare — is now captured and stored electronically in a readily transmittable form.
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The December HIT Standards Committee included a review of the draft Federal Health IT Strategic Plan, recommendations about identity management from the Transport and Security…
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released the most recent numbers for the EHR Incentive programs. Here are some Program-to-date highlights from this latest CMS report – October.
By Rosann M. O’Dell – In May of 1990, the 43rd World Health Assembly of the World Health Organization endorsed the International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision (ICD-10) and recommended it for international use.
It sounds fairly simple and straight forward. Medicaid and Medicare eligible professionals (EP) who have achieved and attested to meaningful use (MU) can assign their incentive payment to another entity. CMS lays it right out there “However, under Medicare, eligible professionals (EPs) may choose to assign their incentive payments to their employer or entity with which the EP has a contractual arrangement.
The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) is partnering with CMS and other public and private organizations to develop the ICD-10 Implementation Success Initiative. The…
In his recent speech to the AMA House of Delegates, AMA president Dr. Robert Wah characterized the planned implementation of ICD-10 as analogous to the dark forces controlling the galaxy in the movie Star Wars: “If it was a droid, ICD-10 would serve Darth Vader… For more than a decade, the AMA kept ICD-10 at bay – and we want to freeze it in carbonite!”
If you are a provider participating in the EHR Incentive Programs, conducting or reviewing a security risk analysis is required to meet Stage 1 and Stage 2 of meaningful use. This meaningful use objective complements, but does not impose new or expanded requirements on the HIPAA Security Rule.
Every day I speak with hospitals involved in the CMS EHR Incentive program. Some are at Stage 1 and some have moved on to Stage 2. For all of them their 2015 meaningful use (MU) year began October 1, 2014. No matter the Stage, they had to be using 2014 Edition certified electronic health record technology (CEHRT).