The Economic Sticks
By MedeAnalytics
The HITECH Act specifies both economic carrots and sticks in future years to motivate hospitals to meaningfully use electronic health records (EHRs).
The Sticks
Economic sticks are negative adjustments to Medicare’s market basket update to the Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS), with adjustments pertaining to meaningful use of EHRs and quality measure reporting and constitute a major financial downside risk for hospitals.
Assessment
Read this whitepaper to find out how your organization may be effected by these economic sticks and to prepare for the scheduled adjustments to these incentives and penalties.
Conclusion
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Filed under: Alerts Sign-Up, Healh Law & Policy, Information Technology, Practice Management Tagged: | ARRA, EHRs, EMRs, HITECH, IPPS, Ken Perez, meaningful use
Forget MU … Remember HIT Security
Healthcare organizations may be lulling themselves into a false sense of security when it comes to data security, according to a biannual report from HIMSS Analytics.
Healthcare organizations seemingly lax with mobile security
http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/report-security-survey-providers-compliance-40068-1.html
Bernie
Reviewing Medical Records for Clinical Medicine?
These researchers in a new report found that the final strategy — using medical records to pick out high-risk patients — was just as effective as the government’s screening program at preventing new cases of heart disease and would save costs.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36777493/ns/health-heart_health
You want MU – I’ll give you meaningful paper use!
Cheers – you crazy Americans!
Farnsworth
eHRs Should be about Clinical Care not Coding and Billing
Most eHRs contain coding advice and even automated E&M calculators. Most template-based eHRs even go to great lengths to facilitate documentation as required by CMS to justify a particular level of reimbursement.
But – what about the patient?
Charlie
Lighten on MU – Sparse Evidence on eMR Safety
Conventional wisdom holds that the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was one of the few parts of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that was widely accepted. ARRA, the $787 billion stimulus bill, passed both houses of Congress along strict party lines, though there was strong bipartisan support for the HITECH provisions.
But, conventional wisdom is often, well … conventional and wrong!
How so? Anthony Guerra, founder and editor of HealthSystemCIO.com and former longtime editor of Healthcare Informatics, challenges that notion by arguing that the legislation is a solution in search of the right problem and that the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology may not be the best entity to lead implementation efforts http://healthsystemcio.com
“In my opinion, ONC can’t be relied on to objectively evaluate and respond to growing concerns that electronic health records, in their current state of sophistication, bring with them as many patient safety risks as improvements,” Guerra writes.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/healthcare/policy/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224701470
To which we not only agree, but have been opining since ME-P inception.
Note: healthsystemCIO.com is the sole online-only publication dedicated to exclusively and comprehensively serving the information needs of healthcare CIOs.
Hope Rachel Hetico; RN, MHA
[Managing Editor]
HIPAA HITECH and Meaningful Use
Here are some recent “meaningful use/HITECH articles. Simply cut and paste to read:
1) fierceemr.com/story/intermountain-would-miss-36-48-current-mu-requirements/2010-06-10
2) zdnet.com/blog/healthcare/expect-slippage-on-meaningful-use-guidelines-and-dates/3715
3)nytimes.com/2010/06/08/health/policy/08health.html
Source: Marc Garfield, DPM
PMNews #3,884
Williamsburg, VA, mgarfield1@cox.net
Colleagues,
Is it true that CMS will finally issue MU guidelines on July 14th, 2010.
If not, shall we storm the Bastille?
Judy
The Final Rules?
The government released new rules on Tuesday that further define “meaningful use” of electronic medical records for physicians and hospitals.
As our readers know, earlier this year, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) authorized incentive payments to physicians for the use of EHRs including $44,000 through Medicare and $63,750 through Medicaid.
But, achieving meaningful use was confusing to stakeholders until now, according to this NEJM publication by David Blumenthal MD, MPP and Marilyn Tavenner RN, MHA.
http://healthcarereform.nejm.org/?p=3732&query=OF
What do our ME-P readers think? Is the debate finally over?
Dr. David Edward Marcinko; MBA
[Editor-in-Chief]
More from the MU Critics
http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/critics-hammer-feds-congressional-meaningful-use-hearing
Jake
The FDA and the ONC Clash over eMRs
Did you know that the CMS regulations for “meaningful use” of EMRs are 864 pages long. And, that the companion rule on EMR certification, from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, is another 228 pages.
Yet there’s not a word about reporting and tracking of errors in EMR software and related systems, according to the Huffington Post Investigative Fund.
http://www.fierceemr.com/story/fda-onc-clash-over-emr-safety-issues/2010-08-05?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal
Is this a family feud, or is it all in the family?
Stanford
IT Provisions Under Health Reform Seen as Saving Money for Payers and Providers
The new health reform law has accelerated the adoption of uniform standards and operating rules for electronic transactions between providers and health plans in an attempt to reduce the administrative burden on both groups. Industry experts see these new provisions, taken together with CMS’s recent final “meaningful-use” regulations, as a positive step, raising the stakes for payers to invest in new IT standards.
Generally speaking, says Julie Korostoff, an attorney in Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, PC’s Boston office, providers view the provisions as a “positive development.”
In addition to easing the administrative burden, this saves money, she tells HRW. There is a big cost to both providers and payers in moving to electronic health records if payers don’t accept the records because of different standards, she explains. “All payers should have the same standards,” she adds.
Source: Barbra Golub, Health Reform Week [8/24/10]