The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has finalized October 1, 2015, as the new compliance date for providers and payers to transition to ICD-10. The July 31, 2014 announcement from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) said the rule would give “providers, insurance companies and others in the health care industry time […]

A reminder to providers who began participation with your first year of Stage 1 for the Medicare EHR Incentive Program in 2014: If you are an eligible Medicare provider and have not previously attested to Meaningful Use under the EHR incentive program, 2014 is the last year you can start participation in order to receive incentive […]

In case you missed the announcement back in late June, the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) has resumed incentive payments under the Medicaid EHR Incentive Program for eligible providers.  What does this mean for Medicaid providers?  If you previously submitted your application for the 2013 or 2014 program year, then your application will be […]

Dear Colleague, I’m writing to inform you of a very recent development that directly affects our provider clients and partners.  As you may be aware, Congress passed a bill Monday, March 31, 2014 that will delay the implementation of ICD-10-CM/PCS until October 1, 2015. The bill now moves to President Obama, who is expected to […]

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on Monday updated language in its “hardship exception” applications for Fiscal Year 2015 for both eligible hospitals and eligible professionals participating in the Medicare Meaningful Use incentive program. The updates come in the wake of hardship exemption flexibility announced Feb. 27 at HIMSS14 in Orlando, Fla. In both the […]

Use of patient portals and electronic visits had no significant impact on the frequency of face-to-face primary care visits for adults in a trial, researchers from the Mayo Clinic have found. In a study published in the March issue of Telemedicine and e-Health, researchers looked at 2,357 primary-care patients who used electronic messaging on a patient portal. The […]

Meaningful Use Stage 2 will go on as planned with no further extensions, but Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner announced that the agency would be more flexible about providing hardship exemptions for providers and vendors truly struggling to meet the incentive program’s requirements. Such exemptions–in which providers wouldn’t receive an incentive payment, but […]

Leading by example, giving patients better access to their health records and borrowing innovations from other industries are all good strategies to transform healthcare, according to a panel of experts at FierceHealthIT’s executive breakfast, “Harnessing Technology and Data to Enable Accountable Care,” held at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s (HIMSS) annual conference in […]

Are you a provider who is demonstrating Stage 2 of meaningful use? If so, a new CMS and ONC tool called the Randomizer will let you exchange data with a Test EHR in order to meet measure #3 of the Stage 2 transitions of care requirement. The transitions of care requirement for eligible professionals and eligible hospitalsincludes three measures. Measure #3 is […]

Starting in 2014, groups will be allowed to submit attestation information for all of their individual Medicare eligible professionals in one file for upload to the attestation system, rather than having to attest for each provider individually. However, providers will still be required to individually register for participation in the EHR Incentive Programs or designate a third party […]