Government & Policy
The face of telehealth is changing in ways that are becoming unrecognizable from just a few short years ago. No longer is it just a rudimentary communication between healthcare providers and patients. It is now a substantive encounter that reflects the intimacy and personal nature of a face-to-face visit, providers of new-generation technology say.
In the conference room of a D.C.-area hotel, Rob Gibran rose from one of many round tables, waited in line, stepped up to a mic, and called for an impromptu vote. Does anyone believe ICD-10 is ever really going to become part of the American healthcare system? Not one of the 100 attendees at WEDI's ICD-10 emergency summit raised a hand.
Despite HHS Secretary nominee Sylvia M. Burwell getting asked some hard-line questions from several Republican lawmakers at a Senate committee hearing Thursday morning, she did appear to receive an overwhelming bipartisan support.
To those shirking their HIPAA privacy and security duties: get ready to pay up. That's the message the Department of Health and Human Services is sending after it set records Wednesday for imposing the largest HIPAA monetary fine to date on two entities found to be seriously lacking in the security arena.
The hits keep on coming for the new EHR certification criteria, as the American Medical Association and Telecommunications Industry Association send their complaints to ONC on the heels of similar criticism submitted earlier by the EHR Association.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said late Thursday it expects the Department of Health and Human Services to "release an interim final rule in the near future that will include a new compliance date that would require the use of ICD-10 beginning October 1, 2015."
Pushing off testing is only one of the unintended consequences triggered by delaying ICD-10. Organizations now have to reassess the project and redefine their requirements, and many will have to find resources to do that.
Texas Health Resources, a 25-hospital health system, is going public with its reporting of patient safety and quality measures, making what was once an internal report open for all to see -- "warts and all," as Texas Resources Chief Clinical Officer Daniel Varga, MD, put it.
The global market for electronic medical records has shot up to $23.2 billion in 2013, according to a new report from research firm Kalorama: EMR 2014: The Market for Electronic Medical Records.
A new poll by the American Health Information Management Association shows widespread industry frustration over ICD-10 and next steps.