Many people have asked me to review the Quality Payment Program final rule, released on October 14, 2016. Several summaries have already been written but your best bet is to rely on the CMS Quality Payment Program website at https://qpp.cms.gov. Yes, the rule is still complex - over 2400 pages, of which more than 50% is the mandated response to comments made on the proposed rule. The good news is that CMS has been very responsive to feedback, creating a transition plan for adoption, reducing the number of criteria and extending the timeline which enables iterative learning before large scale implementation. Under the Quality Payment Program, clinicians have two approaches to choose from for reimbursement: the Merit-based Incentive program (MIPS) and Advanced Alternative Payment Models (APMs)...
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
See the following -
The 8 Steps to Amazon Entering the Health Care Market
This is a thought experiment: What if Amazon really wanted to go all in in the health care sector? What might that look like? What would their strategy be? Where could they deliver value? Amazon looks for industries that are not sensitive to the customer, that have profits or premium pricing based on barriers to entry (often capital related), and looks to exploit those opportunities. It’s pretty straight forward. And, whether that industry is cloud storage space or groceries or “last mile” distribution networks, Amazon is thinking about it...
- Login to post comments
The Belarusian Connection
U.S. intelligence agencies last week urged the Obama administration to check its new healthcare network for malicious software after learning that developers linked to the Belarus government helped produce the website, raising fresh concerns that private data posted by millions of Americans will be compromised. Read More »
- Login to post comments
The HITECH Era – A Patient-Centered Perspective
We appreciate the recent perspectives published in the New England Journal of Medicine on the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009 and the positive impact that it and resulting health IT policies have had on U.S. health care.1,2 The perspectives highlighted the remarkable increase in adoption and use of electronic health records (EHRs) over the past eight years, thanks to the HITECH Act and to ONC’s and CMS’s implementation of it with major advice and help from the multi-stakeholder HIT Policy and Standards committees...
- Login to post comments
The New Health IT Arms Race Between The US And EU
If you were to ask anyone in the United States what “health access” meant to them, you would get a different answer. In the UK, for most people, it means the ability to access National Health Service (NHS) amenities.
- Login to post comments
The Quality Payment Program Final Rule
- Login to post comments
The Sad State of Uncoordinated Care in the U.S.
Care coordination deficiencies in the U.S. healthcare system can be so frustrating that they are (almost) comical. That is a message patient activist Jessica Jacobs aired as she advocated for healthcare operational efficiency improvements and care coordination. Until her death last month, Jacobs blogged and used social media to draw attention to America’s problems with disjointed healthcare. She did this by sharing stories of the numerous system failures she experienced firsthand as a patient with complex care needs...
- Login to post comments
Treasury Prints Money, HHS Burns It
Like invasive vines, so-called improper payments seem totally resistant to agency efforts to cut them down. You won’t find it on the home page, where most agencies put only happy news, but Health and Human Services has warned improper payments through Medicaid are rising fast. They’ll hit an estimated 11.5 percent this year, or $30 billion. The rate last year was 9.8 percent. The dollars were about $15 billion in 2013...
- Login to post comments
Two Things Hospitals Can't Afford To Ignore
The next time someone asks your patient how they’re doing, they might stop to check their data before answering...Consider: An activity and sleep-monitoring device from Fitbit was Amazon.com’s top-selling health and personal care item this past holiday shopping season...
- Login to post comments
U.S. Prosecutors Investigate Oregon's Failed Health Insurance Exchange
The U.S. attorney's office in Portland has issued subpoenas to Oregon's health insurance exchange as part of a grand jury investigation into the spectacular failure of the state's system, which was never able to enroll consumers online even though it spent more than $248 million in taxpayer money on the operation...
- Login to post comments
U.S. To End Coverage Under Health Care Law For Tens Of Thousands
The Obama administration said on Monday that it planned to terminate health insurance for 115,000 people on Oct. 1 because they had failed to prove that they were United States citizens or legal immigrants eligible for coverage under the Affordable Care Act. It also told 363,000 people that they could lose financial aid because their incomes could not be verified...
- Login to post comments
UMD Researchers Develop Tool to Counter Public Health IT Challenges
Front-line protection of U.S. communities against disease epidemics relies on seamless information sharing between public health officials and doctors, plus the wherewithal to act on that data. But health departments have faltered in this mission by lacking guidance to effectively strategize about appropriate “IT investments. And incidents like the current Zika crisis bring the issue to the forefront,” says Ritu Agarwal, Robert H. Smith Dean's Chair of Information Systems and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business...
- Login to post comments
Update: CMS, ONC Ease EHR Certification Requirements For MU
Healthcare providers and the IT vendors who serve them just got a dose of welcome relief from the increasingly controversial certification pieces of meaningful use.
- Login to post comments
US Won't Reveal Records On Health Website Security
After promising not to withhold government information over "speculative or abstract fears," the Obama administration has concluded it will not publicly disclose federal records that could shed light on the security of the government's health care website because doing so could "potentially" allow hackers to break in...
- Login to post comments
VA Announces Launch of 'Lighthouse Lab' at HIMSS18 Conference
...the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced the launch of a “beta” version of its Lighthouse Lab, a computer platform offering software developers access to tools for creating mobile and web applications that will help Veterans better manage their care, services and benefits....Considered the “front door” to VA’s vast data stores, Lighthouse is the department’s application programming interface (API) management platform, and functions similar to a waiter’s role in a restaurant — the critical link communicating orders to the “kitchen.” For VA, the kitchen is the system that will prepare the order then deliver it back to the waiter, or API.
- Login to post comments
VA Facility in Ann Arbor Deploys LiveData PeriOp Manager throughout OR Suite
LiveData, Inc. today announced that the Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan is now using LiveData PeriOp Manager in its operating rooms. LiveData partner Document Storage Systems, Inc. (DSS) installed PeriOp Manager throughout the OR suite. The VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System (VAAAHS) campus serves as a referral center for specialty care and operates 109 acute care beds and 40 Community Living Center (extended care) beds. More than 65,000 Veterans living in a 15-county area of Michigan and northwest Ohio utilized VAAAHS in fiscal year 2015...
- Login to post comments