Reimbursement
As the ICD-10 deadline looms closer, many healthcare organizations are still trying to come up with the most effective communications, collaboration and testing strategies to assure implementation of the diagnostic and procedural code set change.
Concerns are emerging that the adoption of electronic health records is leading to inappropriate increases in billings to payers, including Medicare, and that these higher billings could undermine or even overwhelm any cost savings generated by the digitization of providers. The concerns are legitimate but overall I'm not worried about this phenomenon, at least in the long term.
David P. Blom is one of thousands of hospital executives across the country who are bracing for a reduction in Medicare payments as part of a series of federal spending cuts that began March 1. He talked with Kaiser Health News' Mary Agnes Carey about how his company is preparing to deal with sequestration.
State regulations defining the scope of medical practice for nurse practitioners (NPs) vary widely and more restrictive states also seem to influence restrictive reimbursement policies, a study by the Center for Studying Health System Change has found.
The mHealth Alliance and TechChange announced Friday that registration has opened for their flagship online course, "Mobile Phones for Public Health," which will run from June 3-28, 2013.
In order for the country's healthcare system to survive in the next few years with more insured patients under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and less funding and reimbursements, every healthcare provider is going to have no choice but to make innovative changes and involve patients in the care process. So said longtime health IT advocate C. Peter Waegemann, founder of the now-defunct Medical Records Institute, during a webinar Thursday.
As the use of molecular diagnostics increases -- amid the race to $1,000-or-less personal genomic sequencing -- McKesson and the American Medical Association (AMA) have entered into a licensing partnership to create a registry of the growing list of genomic, metabolomic, proteomic and other molecular tests.
Although new HIPAA electronic transaction standards have been put on the backburner, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has begun the process of mapping out how those new standards will function.
The Department of Health and Human Services has published final Affordable Care Act rules for commercial health insurance, covering guaranteed issue, premiums, rate review and more.
Employer spending on wellness incentives has doubled since 2009 and more companies are requiring employees to undergo biometric tests, according to survey by Fidelity Investments and the National Business Group on Health.