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Supply of skilled coders key to ICD-10 transition It’s all about numbers as hospitals, physician practices and health plans move forward with preparations to meet next year’s federally mandated switch from the current 36-year-old system of coding for diseases, diagnoses and clinical procedures to a new, more comprehensive standard. It’s not just the right code…
By Joseph Goedert for HealthData Management A new survey from the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange on ICD-10 preparations-the seventh survey since late 2009-finds a disturbing lack of industry progress during the past year. WEDI in February 2013 surveyed 974 industry participants, comprising 87 vendors, 109 health plans and 778 providers, and compared results with…
By Dan Munro for Forbes I’ve recounted the story behind this headline before (here) but there’s a longer, more detailed version – and lesson. I attended a healthcare event last year that needs to remain nameless. It wasn’t a big event. In fact, it was very focused and relatively small. That’s about as much as we need to…
By Evan Steele, CEO SRSsoft on EMR Smart Talk A significant portion of the physician market has still not adopted an EHR, despite the lure of government incentives and the fear of the penalties looming on the horizon. The stock prices of most publicly traded ambulatory EHR companies are down sharply, as sales are lower…
By Sandra G. Boodman for Kaiser Health News This story was produced in collaboration with The Washington Post At a critical point in a complex abdominal operation, a surgeon was handed a device that didn’t work because it had been loaded incorrectly by a surgical technician. Furious that she couldn’t use it, the surgeon slammed…
Association cites negative impact EHRs have on docs By Tom Sullivan for HealthcareITNews As the healthcare industry moves to EHRs, the medical record has essentially been reduced to a tool for billing, compliance and litigation that also has a sustained negative impact on doctors’ productivity, according to Steven J. Stack, MD, chair of the American…
By Jennifer Bresnick for EHR Intelligence As CEO of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), Lynne Thomas Gordon, MBA, RHIA, FACHE, has been charged with the task of overseeing the 70,000-strong organization during its efforts to help providers gear up for ICD-10 implementation. Thomas Gordon sat down with EHRintelligence to talk about some of…
Article by Chris Dimick, Editor-in-Chief at the Journal of AHIMA. This article was originally published on the Journal of AHIMA website on February 27, 2013 and is republished here with permission. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will maintain their commitment to the current ICD-10-CM/PCS compliance date of October 1, 2014, according to…
By Carl Natale of ICD-10 Watch , posted at PhysBizTech Physicians will be a key part of making the ICD-10 transition successful. This post focuses on helping doctors become more comfortable with the new code sets. HealthStream outlined these steps in the white paper “Preparing a Successful ICD-10 Transition : Helping Physicians Succeed in an…
Written by Bob Herman for Becker’s Hospital Review Hospitals that rely disproportionately on Medicare patients for revenue may find themselves in a tougher bind over the next several years, as sequestration has started siphoning 2 percent of all Medicare funds. Moody’s Investors Service recently released a report, indicating that sequestration will worsen the “already challenging…