The Center for Medicare and Medicaid’s (CMS) decision to delay the compliance date for the transition to the ICD-10 coding set by one year continues to reverberate throughout the industry. The topic was a popular one in the month of April for HCI readers, who continued to try and make sense of the delay and what the delay means for providers, payers, and all other impacted stakeholders. The multiple healthcare IT related deadlines stemming from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act/Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was also a hot-button issue for HCI readers in April.

Those were just two of the top five stories from the month. Here’s the complete list:

1)      The Different ICD-10 Delay Scenarios

Before the CMS made the decision to delay the compliance date for the transition to ICD-10 by one year (from Oct. 1, 2013 to Oct. 1, 2014), most in the healthcare industry weren’t sure how long it would be. In this article, HCI Assistant Editor Gabriel Perna talks with Deloitte’s Dave Biel, on how the different delay possibilities could have made things a lot different for providers, payers, and others in the industry. While some argue over whether or not the delay should have occurred altogether, others were just trying to figure out what it all meant.  

2)      INDUSTRY-EXCLUSIVE REPORT: Looking at an Avalanche of Deadlines and Timelines in Healthcare

In an HCI exclusive, Editor-in-Chief Mark Hagland speaks with Erica Drazen, Sc.D., the now-retired partner in the Waltham, Mass.-based Global Institute for Emerging Healthcare Practices at the Falls Church, Va.-based CSC, about a pair of charts she and her colleagues have developed, which lay out the various deadlines health IT leaders are facing over the coming years. The visualization of these deadlines, from the ACA and HITECH, shows how complex everything will be for hospitals and physicians.

3)      Is There Such Thing As Interview Foreplay

HCI blogger Gwen Darling offers an interesting look into why she thinks that when a healthcare IT executive is to hire a big executive, they should provide “interview foreplay” with women candidates and talk them up. Using the book "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus” as an example, she describes how men like a no-nonsense approach in interviews, while women like to have more of a connection.

4)      The “Deep Dark Secret” around Data Analytics that Bobbie Byrne Knows

Even though everyone knows data analytics/business intelligence will be an absolute key to the future of healthcare, there is a level of confusion around them these days. In this blog, Hagland talks with Bobbie Byrne, M.D., CIO Edward Hospital and Health Services in Naperville, Ill., who will be a panelist in the session, “Beyond the Data Warehouse: Strategizing the Use and Analysis of Clinical data for Meaningful Use,” along with George Reynolds, M.D., Rick Schooler, and Pat Skarulis, at the Healthcare Informatics Executive Summit, about the challenges with moving toward the new world of analytics.

5)      Unifying a Patient-Centered Medical Home

This feature in April’s HCI issue from Associate Editor Jennifer Prestigiacomo looked at the Adirondack Region Medical Home Pilot Program, founded by community leaders in upstate New York where an aging population of primary care providers is leaving the workforce faster than new PCPs can be recruited. The program was created to increase emphasis on primary, preventive, and chronic care, as well as improving patient communication. The journey of how Adirondack came to be a patient-centered medical home (PCMH) is explored.