Financial/Revenue Cycle Management
The Department of Health and Human Services has a few glaring management and performance issues it needs to work out in the coming year -- at least according to a new report put out by the Office of Inspector General.
"I'm surprised that we continue to see the status quo in revenue cycle management," says Sean Wieland, managing director and senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray, adding that, "If any other industry had a revenue cycle like that, we'd all be living like the Amish."
With annual healthcare expenditures topping $2.7 trillion, industry leaders are rushing to take new cost-cutting measures. One of those measures involves displaying the costs of lab tests in an EHR so docs can see a real-time price comparison of what they're ordering. From a savings perspective, it's working.
Currently, mental health providers are not eligible to receive federal electronic health record incentive payments under the meaningful use program. One U.S. Senator, however, is working to change that.
If more office-based docs got on board with health information technology solutions, they'd be able to see more patients while also lightening their overall workload, according to the findings of a new Johns Hopkins study.
Now covering about half the state's beneficiaries, Colorado's Medicaid accountable care program saw a 15 percent reduction in hospital admissions and a 25 percent reduction in high-cost imaging in the 2013 fiscal year, contributing to $44 million in savings.
Greece is no stranger to fiscal turmoil. It has one of the highest unemployment rates in the Western world and has racked up more than €321 billion of public debt. But some say the country's two-and a-half-year-old e-prescribing system is on the right track, helping reduce pharmaceutical expenditures by 50 percent.
In the revenue cycle management market, hospitals show high adoption of technology focused on eligibility and scheduling, with much work left to be done around charity screening and propensity to pay, according to a new report from HIMSS Analytics.
Device encryption may seem like a fairly straightforward undertaking, but it's proven to be one HIPAA-covered entities and business associates frequently forgo -- much to their chagrin down the road, when they're notifying individuals of a privacy breach involving unencrypted personal data.
Before you know it, the ICD-10 go-live date of October 2014 will be here, and for those 55 percent of physicians who have yet to begin implementation, it's looking like a rocky road ahead.