Category: CMS

The following is a guest post by Angela Carter, marketing manager at ChartLogic. A major concern physicians have dealt with over the past 10–15 years has been choosing the right EHR solution for their practice. With the rise and fall of numerous electronic health record companies, that concern has evolved to whether a chosen EHR…

Hospice patients are expected to die: The treatment focuses on providing comfort to the terminally ill, not finding a cure. To enroll a patient, two doctors certify a life expectancy of six months or less. But over the past decade, the number of “hospice survivors” in the United States has risen dramatically, in part because…

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs are among eight federal agencies chastised in a new Government Accountability Organization report for inconsistency in responding to data breaches involving personally identifiable information. read more …read more

Nearly 500,000 medical records have been sent to Medicare review contractors through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Electronic Submission of Medical Documentation (esMD) system, since it launched in 2011. Nearly 500,000 medical records have been sent to Medicare review contractors through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Electronic Submission of…

California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones criticized Blue Shield of California for an “unreasonable” rate hike affecting about 81,000 individual policyholders. … But he and other state officials don’t have the authority to reject changes in premiums. Jones said the latest rate hike amounted to an average increase of 32 percent over a two-year period (Terhune,…

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and its contractors have done little to address vulnerabilities in electronic health records, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office of Inspector General. read more …read more

A new report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) indicates that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has not adopted practices that would protect fraud vulnerabilities in electronic health record (EHR) systems. A new report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human…

Americans’ spending on health care rose a relatively modest 3.7 percent in 2012 — slower than the growth of the overall economy — dropping from 17.3 percent of U.S. spending to 17.2 percent, according to an annual report from the Centers on Medicare & Medicaid Services. …read more

Draft regulations issued Monday would overhaul the prescription drug program and could save up to $1.3 billion over five years. …read more

Members of Congress are using the continued debate over the Medicare sustainable growth rate as an opportunity to require more interoperability among electronic health records in the Meaningful Use program. read more …read more