CMS announces six-month delay in implementing Two-Midnight Rule, now slated to happen October 1. By Christine Kern, contributing writer
The American Medical Association wants the ICD-10 transition deadline extended - or at least some enforcement concessions made - while the Obama administration is firm in its insistence that it will stay as is. Who will blink first? By John Oncea, Editor, Health IT Outcomes
Florida lawmakers are leading a push for increased use of and payment for telemedicine By Katie Wike, contributing writer
The term Accountable Care Organization has been around since 2006 and, in 2009, became part of the healthcare industry landscape when it was included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. BerylHealth created this infographic which provides a wealth of ACO-related information from the amount of the U.S. GDP spent on healthcare (15%) to the number of quality measures ACOs are measured on (33). By John Oncea, editor, Health IT Outcomes
In 2001, the corporate transcription department of UC Health (formerly Health Alliance) in Cincinnati, Ohio was drowning from an increased volume of medical transcription. In particular, an increase in Emergency Department dictations added to an already heavy workload.
This special report covers the uses for Electronic Health Records (EHRs) beyond just collecting, aggregating and reporting on data and demonstrating compliance with Meaningful Use (MU).
At the 2011 conference, EMC's team of healthcare solution specialists spoke with several vendors and conferees and asked one question: "What is the best way to reduce costs and complexity in a healthcare IT infrastructure?" The overwhelming answer was to enable a cloud environment for patient data and to find a solution for managing so-called "big data."
Our population is becoming more mobile on a daily basis, and healthcare professionals are no exception. In fact, the very nature of the healthcare industry makes it ripe for a move to mobile. It also presents special implementation challenges.
Many industry leaders championed a free market approach to healthcare during the 12th Annual World Health Care Congress last week. Here are a few key reasons why I don’t think this model is “the fix” our industry so desperately needs.
An Accountable Care Organization (ACO) utilizes a payment and care delivery system that bases payments to providers on quality metrics and seeks to reduce the total cost of care for a certain population of patients. ACOs use a range of payment models and consist of groups of coordinated healthcare providers that provide care to groups of patients. ACOs are accountable to a third-party payer and the group of patients for the appropriateness, quality, and efficiency of the health services they provide.
In 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) set forth initial guidelines for ACOs to be created under the Medicare Shared Savings Program. These guidelines contained all necessary steps required for a physician, health care provider, or hospital to voluntarily participate in ACOs.
The quality measures used to evaluate an ACO's performance as defined by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) fall into five domains. These domains are patient/caregiver experience, care coordination, patient safety, preventative health, and at-risk population/frail elderly health.
The three stakeholders in an ACO are the providers, payers, and patients. Providers are a network of hospitals, physicians, and other healthcare professionals. The primary payer is the federal government, Medicare, but also includes other payers such as private insurances or employee-purchased insurance. The patient population of an ACO will primarily consist of Medicare beneficiaries, but in larger ACOs can also include those who are homeless and uninsured.
According to a new report, a lack of out-of-network interoperability is the biggest obstacle facing ACOs today. By Katie Wike, contributing writer
