News
The news that someone slipped a provision into the Sustainable Growth Rate patch legislation that will once again delay the transition to ICD-10 is disappointing, and symptomatic of the seemingly unreliable relationship that exists between providers, technology vendors and the government.
It took the Senate nearly five hours Mar. 31 to debate and approve a bill that would temporarily fix the SGR and also delay ICD-10 one year. The curious -- and disconcerting -- thing is, during that time not a single Senator made mention of the ICD-10 provision included in the bill, leaving many industry officials questioning: Do they even know what they just voted on? Either way, overall the folks in healthcare were not very happy.
Industry observers and insiders alike were a bit surprised that the American Medical Association did not appear overjoyed with the prospect of ICD-10 being pushed back. But, the organization had its reasons.
Perhaps if the Senate had voted down the doc pay patch, regrouped, come back with another stab at permanent SGR repeal, someone would have noticed Section 212 saying that HHS cannot mandate ICD-10 as the standard code set before Oct. 1, 2014, in effect delaying the deadline by another year.
There are two types of analytics projects: those boundary-pushing advancements that, where they do exist, are mainly the product of big hospitals and academic medical centers, and the humbler, more doable -- but sometimes just as valuable -- insights that can be gleaned by smaller providers.
The U.S. Senate voted to pass the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014, which both pushes back the compliance deadline for ICD-10 and preserves the pay rate for doctors treating Medicare patients. Before those officially take hold, however, President Barack Obama has to sign the bill into law.
The American Health Information Management Association, the organization made up of professionals who manage healthcare information, is urging controls on the copy-and-paste functionality in electronic health record systems.
The American Health Information Management Association is urging controls on the copy-and-paste functionality in electronic health record systems. The use of copy-and-paste should be permitted only when such "strong technology and administrative controls," are in place, the organization wrote in a position statement.
Healthcare IT is very good at collecting data, but are we using it to make good decisions?
ICD-10 has been the butt of countless jokes during the last several months but none so surprising as the latest one-liner. Only this isn't funny. Whether you're hoping President Obama gets a chance to sign the provision pushing ICD-10 back within the SGR fix into law, or crossing fingers that the Senate kills it come Monday, no matter.