News
We hear a lot about patient engagement these days. Certainly, the idea is a noble one. And the benefits it could bring when practiced on a wide scale are immense. But a lot of providers are still wondering: How do you do it?
Overall provider satisfaction with HIE solutions has dropped an average of 8 percent since last year as provider demands have outpaced vendor delivery, according to a new report from research firm KLAS. However, Cambridge, Mass.-based InterSystems was so pleased with its outcomes that the company provided details.
A new unit by HL7 and AIRA aims to create a national forum to target and solve challenges facing immunization-related healthcare interoperability projects.
The brainchild of medical researcher, professor and self-made billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, NantHealth is aimed at solving the interoperability crisis and connecting the industry in the most powerful of ways -- a direct response of discontent with the federal government's EHR Incentive Program.
The news that someone slipped a provision into the Sustainable Growth Rate patch legislation that will once again delay the transition to ICD-10 is disappointing, and symptomatic of the seemingly unreliable relationship that exists between providers, technology vendors and the government.
It took the Senate nearly five hours Mar. 31 to debate and approve a bill that would temporarily fix the SGR and also delay ICD-10 one year. The curious -- and disconcerting -- thing is, during that time not a single Senator made mention of the ICD-10 provision included in the bill, leaving many industry officials questioning: Do they even know what they just voted on? Either way, overall the folks in healthcare were not very happy.
Industry observers and insiders alike were a bit surprised that the American Medical Association did not appear overjoyed with the prospect of ICD-10 being pushed back. But, the organization had its reasons.
Perhaps if the Senate had voted down the doc pay patch, regrouped, come back with another stab at permanent SGR repeal, someone would have noticed Section 212 saying that HHS cannot mandate ICD-10 as the standard code set before Oct. 1, 2014, in effect delaying the deadline by another year.
There are two types of analytics projects: those boundary-pushing advancements that, where they do exist, are mainly the product of big hospitals and academic medical centers, and the humbler, more doable -- but sometimes just as valuable -- insights that can be gleaned by smaller providers.
The U.S. Senate voted to pass the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014, which both pushes back the compliance deadline for ICD-10 and preserves the pay rate for doctors treating Medicare patients. Before those officially take hold, however, President Barack Obama has to sign the bill into law.