January 3, 2013 Gabriel Perna
news
According to a request for information (RFI) document released recently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is reaching out to providers, EHR vendors, and other interested parties on electronically reporting patient-level data under the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) Program starting in 2014.
January 2, 2013 John DeGaspari
news
Medical centers that elect to keep psychiatric files private and separate from the rest of a person's medical record may be doing their patients a disservice, a Johns Hopkins study concludes.
December 27, 2012 Mark Hagland
news
A new study is casting a harsh light on so-called “never events” in the surgical sphere, finding that such adverse events, which can include leaving a sponge inside a patient or operating on the wrong side of the body, led to malpractice litigation in more than 4,000 instances every year, and cost healthcare professionals at least $1.3 billion in malpractice payouts between 1990 and 2010.
December 5, 2012 Gabriel Perna
news
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has announced a $200,000 challenge for developers to create game applications that help generate “useful” healthcare quality data, the organization announced this week. This is the foundation’s second major competition in its Aligning Forces initiative for Quality (AF4Q), an initiative to improve the quality of healthcare in various targeted communities across the country, while providing models of reform.
December 4, 2012 Jeff Smith, Assistant Director of Advocacy at CHIME
article
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services intends to waive certain quality data submission and validation requirements for hospitals in Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island counties designated “major disaster” areas for Hurricane Sandy by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, CMS announced recently.
November 16, 2012 Gabriel Perna
news
The Office for the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has released the beta version of certification tool, Cypress, which tests EHRs and EHR modules in calculating Meaningful Use (MU) Stage 2 Clinical Quality Measures (CQMs). ONC says its certification program "provides a defined process" to ensure certificated EHRs meet the adopted standards and criteria of meaningful use.
October 26, 2012 Gabriel Perna
news
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) posted the final Clinical Quality Measures (CQMS) for 2014 on its website, the government agency reported. CQMs will change in 2014 for providers, and those that are eligible for meaningful use, either Stage 1 or Stage 2, will have included the new criteria in their EHRs, CMS says.
October 16, 2012 Jeff Smith, Assistant Director of Advocacy at CHIME
article
CHIME members voiced their concern this week with congressional proposals to “immediately suspend” EHR incentive payments. In an Oct. 4 letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Ways & Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI-4), Energy & Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI-6), Ways & Means Health Subcommittee Chair Wally Herger (R-CA-2) and Energy & Commerce Health Subcommittee Chair Joe Pitts (R-PA-16) voice concern that the incentive payments were being wasted because many providers continue to lack interoperability.
October 12, 2012 Gabriel Perna
blog
Two university research studies are indicating that the way in which readmission rates are calculated can create a variance and might be misleading. Considering the serious penalties derived from the mandatory Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Readmissions Reduction program, are hospitals getting the shaft with the way calculations are made?
October 9, 2012 Gabriel Perna
news
According to a new study in the CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal), comparing hospital performance based on readmission rates and early death rates should require caution because those two indicators have significant variation in their values, depending on how they are calculated.
October 8, 2012 Mark Hagland
blog
As if the landscape weren't already clear, a recent MedPAC report underscores the multifaceted challenges facing hospitals of all types when it comes to succeeding under Medicare's mandatory readmissions program.
October 3, 2012
news
The National Library of Medicine (NLM), the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), have announced that the trio of government agencies will soon launch the NLM Value Set Authority Center (VSAC). This will provide downloadable access to all official versions of vocabulary Value Sets contained in Clinical Quality Measures that support Meaningful Use Stage 2.
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