Meaningful Use

Washington Debrief: Flex-IT Bill Makes Series of Meaningful Use Program Changes

By Leslie Kriegstein, Interim Vice President of Public Policy, CHIME for Healthcare Informatics Congressional Affairs Flex-IT Bill Makes Series of Meaningful Use Program Changes Key Takeaway: Congresswoman Renee Ellmers (R-NC-02) introduced legislation last week that makes a series of substantial improvements to the Meaningful Use Program, including a delay in the release Stage 3 rules.…

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Congress Considers Putting Brakes on Stage 3

By Joseph Goedert for HealthData Management Federal lawmakers are noticing some dark clouds surrounding the electronic health records meaningful use program to prod providers to adopt EHRs. With rising recent struggles in the program, lawmakers may be poised to intervene to push back the program’s third stage. Problems with the current stage are all too…

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Technologies to Support Clinical Documentation Improvement

By Dr. Jonathan Elion, MD, FACC for HealthTECH Zone The Photographic Painting The value of a new technology is often not understood for many years after its invention. The first film cameras (remember those?) were initially used to capture landscapes, still life studies and portraits. In that regard, they were acting as a “photographic painting”,…

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Two Dirty Little Secrets About Electronic Health Records

By Larry Husten for Forbes Here are two dirty little secrets about electronic health records (EHR). Just about everyone in the field already knows these secrets, and many are quietly horrified, but few want to discuss them since there are no obvious or easy solutions. EHRs Are a Threat to Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom…

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Medicare tweaks quality and safety programs in hospital payment rule

By Sabriya Rice for Modern Healthcare The CMS floated a slate of tweaks to Medicare’s quality- and safety-reporting requirements in its sweeping proposed rule for 2016 inpatient hospital rates issued last week. Within the 1,500-page draft rule for the Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems, the CMS outlines changes coming down the pike for the hospital…

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Exploring the Ethics of Value-Based Purchasing

By Philip Nathanson for VBP monitor The ethics of value-based purchasing (VBP) seem straightforward enough, don’t they? A purchaser of healthcare ties compensation to how providers perform on various measurable aspects of the triple aim. Who could have an ethical problem about rewarding providers for better population outcomes, or enhanced patient satisfaction, or more cost-effective…

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HIPAA Audits Are Still on Hold

By Marianne Kolbasuk McGee for Govinfo Security OCR Director Reveals Enforcement Plans for 2015 The unit of the Department of Health and Human Services that enforces HIPAA still has plenty of work to do before it can launch its long-promised next round of HIPAA compliance audits, as planned for this year. The HHS Office for…

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