Healthcare Finance Staff
As the government gears up to develop standards for meaningful use Stages 2 and 3, the American Medical Association and MITRE Corporation, on behalf of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, are working on a project to help test the collection of population health "in the real world."
More than 21,000 providers have registered to participate in the electronic heath record incentive program of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and about two-thirds are ready to confirm that they have met the meaningful use requirements.
The debut of HIMSS' mini-conference HIT X.0 drew hundreds of attendees to a keynote featuring Aneesh Chopra, U.S. technology czar, and John Glaser, CEO of the Health Services Business Unit at Siemens.
Converting to the ICD-10 medical diagnosis code set is not for the faint of heart. It's likely to be complicated, expensive and may entail a loss of productivity that could take five-to-six years to gain back, according to experts. The conversion is federally mandated by Oct. 1, 2013, and unlike many times in the past, there's no indication it will be postponed.
Two key elements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are the requirement that health insurance carriers accept all applicants (what's called guarantee issue) matched by a requirement that individuals obtain health care coverage or face a penalty (referred to as an individual mandate). The PPACA was not the first bill take this approach to move toward more universal coverage. In response to then President Bill Clinton's health care reform proposal, 19 Republican Senators joined by two Democrats, put forward the Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act of 1993.
We've seen the ease with which he bested his human opponents on the Jeopardy! challenge. Next up for Watson the supercomputer? Improving the delivery of healthcare.
3M Health Information Systems and Nuance Communications have announced a collaboration to develop a next generation, ICD-10-ready clinical documentation improvement solution.
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services announced Wednesday the awarding of $241 million in "Early Innovator" grants to help seven states design and implement the IT infrastructure needed to launch state health insurance exchanges.
TRICARE, the health care program serving active duty service members, is gauging industry interest and capabilities for providing a Web-based electronic health record system for its military health system.
CIGNA has signed agreements to establish onsite healthcare clinics on American air bases in Kandahar and Bagram, Afghanistan.