Reimbursement

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) held National HIPAA 5010 Testing Week last week, and those clearinghouses, providers and payers that were unable to participate should take heed.

athenahealth announced Monday it will launch the Patient-Centered Medical Home Accelerator Program, which aims to assist primary care physician groups in meeting the National Committee for Quality Assurance's (NCQA) newest PCMH recognition standards.

North Carolina employers have a chance to help improve patient care and save healthcare costs thanks to First in Health, a public-private partnership that will make it possible for them to tap into a medical home created for Medicaid recipients that has helped improve care while saving more than $1 billion.

With Medicare soon releasing a final rule on reducing hospital readmissions, hospitals need to strengthen their efforts in this endeavor. Hospitals with the highest rates of readmissions can face the harshest penalties, with the CMS cutting 3% of their reimbursements.

A broad-based, year-and-a-half old program aimed at improving the safety of in-patient care across California helped save 800 lives in its first year, according to a report from the National Health Foundation, one of the collaborators in the program.

Aiming to single out high-potential health IT startups and help enable their "rapid development and growth," Healthbox is a new accelerator program that offers support for seed-stage companies that can chart the "complex transition into the digital age."

A new study from Humana and the Wisconsin Health Information Exchange (WHIE) shows that using health information exchanges in emergency departments results in improved provider efficiencies and health plan cost savings.

MedHOK, which develops cloud-based care management and compliance software, has partnered with New York County Health Services Review Organization (NYCHSRO)/MedReview to help health plans drive improvements in their HEDIS scores.

Continuing their crusade to make the congressional super committee aware of the repercussions of how cuts to Medicare and Medicaid will impact the skilled nursing facility industry, SNF advocates have released an analysis by Avalere Health that finds if more cuts are made, the industry's operating margin will be zilch.

Healthcare providers will be able to apply to participate in one or more of the initial four models to test the use of bundled payments and their incentives for improving patient care and their outcomes, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.