Policy

Editors Picks

Washington Debrief: Sebelius Responds to GOP Senators on HITECH Criticism

Jeff Smith, Director of Public Policy at CHIME
Six Senators sent letters to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and health IT stakeholders questioning the effectiveness of HITECH implementation. In response to the report, Secretary Sebelius said, “We haven’t gotten to implementation of Stage 2 yet,” Sebelius said in a recent Senate Finance Committee budget hearing. “You might be reading the final chapter before we launch it.”

Top Stories

Private-Sector ACO Development in Northern California

May 17, 2013     John DeGaspari
article
During the afternoon breakout session at the HCI Executive Summit, Simon Jones, director, ACO IT and program strategy at Blue Shield of California, discussed the health plan’s experience in the ACO arena. Jones noted that healthcare is on an unsustainable path: there is no sustainable approach to reducing costs and improving care, and incentives do not promote a long-term, system-wide approach.

Park Nicollet’s Pioneer ACO Initiative

May 16, 2013     John DeGaspari
article
At a morning breakout session of the HCI Executive Summit, Sam VanNorman, director of business intelligence, and Curtis A. Boehm, M.D., chief medical information officer, gave their perspectives on Park Nicollet Health System’s experience as a Pioneer Accountable Care Organization.

Charting a New Course in Healthcare

May 16, 2013     John DeGaspari
article
In the opening plenary presentation of the HCI Executive Summit, Russ Branzell, CEO and president of CHIME said we have come along way in healthcare IT, illustrating his point with a mix of vintage and modern photographs. But we have a really, really long way to go, he said.

Leveraging Analytics to Improve Quality and Efficiency Across Care Continuum

May 16, 2013     John DeGaspari
article
In a Thursday session at the HCI Executive Summit, Paul Katz, founder and CEO of Intelligent Systems, said now is the time for healthcare providers to take advantage of the explosion of data.

BREAKING NEWS: Senate Confirms Marilyn Tavenner as permanent administrator of CMS

May 15, 2013     Mark Hagland
article
Marilyn Tavenner, R.N., the acting administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), on Wednesday, May 15, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as CMS’s permanent administrator, the first nominee for the job to receive formal confirmation in nearly a decade.

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Administration Announces $1B Initiative to Launch Health Care Innovation Awards Round Two

May 15, 2013     Rajiv Leventhal
news
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced a nearly $1 billion initiative that will fund awards and evaluation to build on the Obama administration’s work to transform the healthcare system by delivering better care and lowering costs. This second round of Health Care Innovation Awards will fund applicants that have a high likelihood of driving health care system transformation and delivering better outcomes.

Washington Debrief: Lawmakers Want Ideas on Medicare Payment Changes

May 14, 2013     Jeff Smith, Director of Public Policy at CHIME
article
A bipartisan call came from the Senate Finance Committee this week, asking healthcare providers for input on how to fix the “broken” Medicare payment system. “The current Medicare physician payment system is inefficient and needs to go,” Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said.

Looking at Outcomes Measurement, HSC Researchers Ask: How Many Measures Are Too Many?

May 12, 2013     Mark Hagland
article
On April 25, the Washington, D.C.-based center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) released a new policy analysis, entitled “Hospital Quality Reporting: Separating the Signal from the Noise,” written by two HSC researchers. The primary goal of the researchers was to help healthcare purchasers look at what has been effective in outcomes measurement in healthcare. But the implications for CIOs, CMIOs, and other healthcare IT leaders are many.

About CMS’s Hospital Charge Data Move: There Are No Secrets Anymore

May 9, 2013     Mark Hagland
blog
In the second decade of the 21st century, amid the new transparency in everything, the days when issues like hospital pricing—and clinical outcomes—were obscure topics, are nearly over. What are the implications on both the pricing and outcomes sides of the equation?

CMS Publicly Releases Hospital Charge Information, with Resulting Media Attention to Charges

May 8, 2013     Mark Hagland
article
On May 8, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services publicly released hospital charge information, unleashing a wave of mainstream news media coverage, with articles and broadcast segments highlighting dramatic variations in hospital prices, but with the American Hospital Association emphasizing that Medicare does not pay hospital-set charges.

ICD-10 Transition Will Be Convoluted, Study Finds

May 8, 2013     Gabriel Perna
news
According to a recent study headed by researchers at the University of Illinois, the oft-controversial transition to the 10th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) code set will be a challenge for many providers thanks to convoluted conversion mappings. The convoluted, or complex, entangled, and non-reciprocal, mappings will possibly impact a provider’s staffing, supply management, and clinical revenue, the researchers found.

Mostashari: Digitization of Healthcare Advancing, But Work Flow Efforts Lag

May 7, 2013     David Raths
news
In his opening remarks to the May 7 Health IT Policy Committee, Farzad Mostashari, M.D., national coordinator for health IT, spoke about work flow and business process changes that must accompany payment reform and technology infrastructure. Mostashari chose not to use the policy committee forum to address the recent suggestion by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) that Stage 2 of meaningful use be extended for an extra year. “We are halfway through the process of computerizing and digitizing healthcare settings, but only 5 percent of the way through redesigning work flows,” he said.
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