Mary Mosquera

The enhanced set of protections finalized in the omnibus HIPAA privacy and security rule released Jan.17 now becomes the new baseline for anyone who handles health information. It doesn't change meaningful use requirements, but combined, the two may drive more providers to protect patient data, according to privacy and security experts.

Eleven states have received $1.5 billion more in grants from the Health and Human Services Department to support their creation of health insurance exchanges, which must be ready in October for enrollment season.

The Federal Communications Commission will make $400 million available annually to healthcare providers to expand the development of broadband telehealth networks from a pilot to a permanent program. The pilot program has supported 50 provider healthcare networks in 38 states.

Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record payments are estimated to have blasted through $10.3 billion to a total of 180,200 physicians and hospitals through December since the program's inception. December's payments of $1.25 billion were driven by the largest amount of hospital payments for an individual month.

The year 2012 was the year when data showed its muscle, whether in the presidential elections or in demonstrating how deeply entrenched the adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records had become.

The continuing saga around the deadline delay for states to decide whether they'll establish their own health insurance exchanges doesn't change the final upshot: All states are anticipated to have an online insurance marketplace, one way or another. The delays may also make a federal/state partnership model for the exchange more palatable and a way out for unprepared states, at least in the initial years, according to an expert on state healthcare issues.

Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record (EHR) incentive payments are estimated to have reached $9.245 billion to 177,100 physicians and hospitals through November since the program's inception and are anticipated to reach $10 billion by the end of the year (Healthcare IT News went to press before the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) posted final figures in late December).

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT wants to use EHR certification criteria to make it easier for physicians to report patient safety events. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality will encourage providers to report adverse events to patient safety organizations, and ONC will propose certification requirements that, where appropriate, EHRs can report safety events in AHRQ's Common Formats.

Now that states have declared their plans for health insurance exchanges, the focus can move from which model to choose -- and its political implications -- to the details of their progress as they prepare for enrollment in October 2013, just 10 months off.

With the Dec. 14 deadline on health insurance exchanges, states were required to provide a blueprint of their plans to the Department of Health and Human Services for how they will create their state-based health insurance exchanges. About half of the states have decided to surrender control to the federal government to build an exchange for them.