Government & Policy

Healthcare in the United States has its own myriad, manifest and much-discussed problems. But they're nothing compared to those afflicting the primitive and limited systems in many other parts of the world.

The Health IT Policy Committee, the advisory panel to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), voted June 8 to recommend delaying the start of Stage 2 of meaningful use until 2014.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) approved in June the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as the ONC-approved accreditor (ONC-AA) for the permanent certification program for health information technology.

The comment period ended on June 6 for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) proposed rule on accountable care organizations (ACOs).

What if CMS threw a meaningful use party and nobody showed up?

With six months and counting until the compliance deadline, participants lagging and blaming fingers pointing in every direction, the healthcare industry isn't ready for HIPAA 5010. And that doesn't bode well for ICD-10, either.

Despite the criticism waged against the proposed ACO rules, there's an appetite in healthcare to rethink the delivery system – but only if CMS eases the measures.

The administrative simplification could save providers, insurers billions of dollars by enabling them to automate these processes.

With the prohibitive and rising cost of healthcare, there has never been a greater need for accountable care organizations, according to Mark McClellan, MD, former administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Farzad Mostashari, MD, the nation's healthcare IT chief, pronounced the graduates of a new health information technology program at Columbia University and Weill Cornell Medical College to be leaders in a healthcare movement that's critical to the nation, as he addressed the graduating class on June 24.