May 15, 2012 Jeff Smith, Assistant Director of Advocacy at CHIME
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) today submitted comments to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius regarding a notice of proposed rulemaking to postpone the compliance date for International Classification of Diseases, 10th Edition diagnosis and procedure codes (ICD-10) to October 1, 2014. In its comments, CHIME urged HHS to remain committed to ICD-10, while calling the one year delay an appropriate “middle ground” for all stakeholders.
May 8, 2012 Jeff Smith, Assistant Director of Advocacy at CHIME
Despite a fairly constant flurry of news clippings regarding federal efforts to combat fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, prominent Senators want more “tangible results” from CMS to improve program integrity...Comments filed with both the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) identified concerns related to the proposed Stage 2 EHR reporting period as well as CMS’ varying approach to clinical quality measures (CQMs).
May 1, 2012 Jeff Smith, Assistant Director of Advocacy at CHIME
Three Senators sent a letter to HHS Secretary Sebelius, reminding her office of a November request for information on the CMS Innovation Center. “[W]e remain concerned that at a time of significant uncertainty for the fiscal health of the U.S. government, funds are being expended by the Innovation Center with little to no actual value provided,” Sens Enzi (R-WY) Coburn (R-OK) and Hatch (R-UT) say in their letter.
April 24, 2012 Jeff Smith, Assistant Director of Advocacy at CHIME
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has published corrections to its Meaningful Use Stage 2 proposed rule in the Federal Register. Several of the changes are clerical corrections and do not substantively change the proposed measures and objectives. During a hearing this week, the first Congress has held since before Easter, the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, introduced the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act.
April 18, 2012 Jeff Smith, Assistant Director of Advocacy at CHIME
This week, HHS released a proposed rule delaying the compliance date of ICD-10, for both diagnosis and procedure codes, from Oct. 1, 2013 to Oct. 1, 2014. In February, HHS announced that it would reconsider the timetable for ICD-10 implementation, and CHIME responded with a letter to HHS saying uncertainty about the timetable would create more problems than it would solve.
April 12, 2012 Jeff Smith, Assistant Director of Advocacy at CHIME
A week following Supreme Court oral arguments over the Affordable Care Act, Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse wants people to focus attention on parts of the law unrelated to the “individual mandate.” Prepared for the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, Sen. Whitehouse release a report this week that highlights some of the delivery and payment reforms that have taken place since 2010.
April 5, 2012 Jeff Smith, Assistant Director of Advocacy at CHIME
If you’ve been listening to the gurus and talking heads of Washington this week, you were probably shocked to learn the Supreme Court struck down the individual mandate. Or, if you were paying attention, you learned that not much has really changed since last Friday.
March 28, 2012 Jeff Smith, Assistant Director of Advocacy at CHIME
The health IT community in Washington DC has been busy this week, quizzing each other on the possible ramifications of the Supreme Court case involving twenty-six states over provisions in the Affordable Care Act. Oral arguments began this week, and while the public at large will focus on the ACA’s “Individual Mandate provision” or “shared responsibility requirement,” the ACA includes a number of provisions dependent on, or related to, health IT.
March 19, 2012 Jeff Smith, Assistant Director of Advocacy at CHIME
In an announcement made Thursday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said it will further delay enforcement of HIPAA 5010 standards until June 30, 2012. In November, the CMS Office of E-Health Standards and Services (OESS) announced a 90-day period of enforcement discretion “based on industry feedback revealing that, with only about 45 days remaining before the Jan. 1, 2012 compliance date, testing between some covered entities and their trading partners has not yet reached a threshold whereby a majority of covered entities would be able to be in compliance by Jan. 1.”
March 13, 2012 Jeff Smith, Assistant Director of Advocacy at CHIME
A study released this week in the March edition of Health Affairs is causing a stir among health IT advocates. According to research by Dr. Danny McCormick, assistant professor at the Harvard Medical School and a member of the department of medicine at the Cambridge Health Alliance, doctors with computerized access to a patient’s previous image results ordered more tests than those without the tracking technology – a lot more.
