|
Foundation Members:
|
|
|
|
Advocacy Corner Briefs
January 27, 2012 -Report from Washington
Health Innovators Gather in Washington; Prizes and Challenges Announced At a gathering of healthcare stakeholders in Washington this week, over a dozen healthcare "challenges" were announced by payers, vendors, non-profits and the public sector. The Care Innovations Summit brought together public and private sector leaders in healthcare who unveiled new initiatives and issued new challenges - many of them backed by cash rewards - asking innovators to address problems related to chronic disease, healthcare costs, care transitions and other issues... read more
|
January 20, 2012 - Report from Washington
CBO Report Sheds New Light on (In)effectiveness of Past Delivery Reform Pilots This past Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office released an issue brief that looked at past attempts by Medicare to save money through delivery reform pilots. The CBO’s conclusions were less than enthusiastic. According to the report, “CBO reviewed the outcomes of 10 major demonstrations that have been evaluated by independent researchers. The evaluations show that most programs have... read more
|
January 13, 2011 - Report from Washington
Health IT Policy Committee Talks MU, Work Plans for 2012 During the first meeting of 2012, Health Information Technology Policy Committee members were briefed by CMS officials on the progress of Meaningful Use and discussed the regulatory timeline for the year ahead. According to official numbers from CMS, over $2.5 billion in incentive payments have been paid to successful attesters for the meaningful use EHRs. Other highlights include:... read more
|
January 6, 2012 - Report from Washington
Health Policy Watchers Fill Their 2012 Calendars As is customary for the first week of any new year, we take a beautifully bland calendar and scribble in the first few markings of what will become a near unreadable mess. To help you jumpstart the process, several “dates to watch” came out this week from health policy observers, inside and outside the Beltway. First, the dates you missed:... read more
|
December 23, 2011 - Report from Washington
House Agrees to Senate SGR and Payroll Tax Plan after StalemateAfter a highly contentious week of political back-and-forth, House Speaker John Boehner decided Thursday to reverse course... read more
|
December 15, 2011 - Report from Washington
HITSC Looks Ahead to 2012 After Reviewing Activity in 2011 During Last MeetingDuring the last meeting of the Federal Advisory Health IT Standards Committee of 2011, the agenda focused on what lies ahead in 2012. Of particular interest was a report by Dr. Doug Fridsma, director of ONC’s Office of Standards and Interoperability, who gave an overview... read more
|
December 2, 2011 - Report from Washington
HHS Secretary Announces Meaningful Use Stage 1 Extension In a move that has been choreographed for months, this week HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that doctors and hospitals who attest this year will not have to adopt new standards until 2014. Wednesday’s announcement stands to positively impact all those hospitals who attested prior to November 30 and all those doctors who can attest before February 28, 2012. These groups will be eligible for three payments based on... read more
|
November 18, 2011 - Report from Washington
Implementation Workgroup Relays Recommendations to HIT Standards Committee The Health IT Standards Committee held its monthly in-person meeting this week, where members of the Implementation Workgroup discussed their recommendations to facilitate meaningful use, given feedback from early adopters in the field. Based on feedback from CIOs, vendors and other senior IT leaders, the Implementation Workgroup made recommendations that echoed much of what CHIME and others said... read more
|
November 4, 2011 - Report from Washington
ONC to Survey Consumers on Health IT Privacy and Security The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is interested in better understanding consumer sentiment on health IT privacy and security. In a notice of proposed data collection (.pdf), ONC said it will conduct a five-year project to collect consumer attitudes towards the privacy and security aspects of electronic health records, health information exchange... read more
|
October 14, 2011 - Report from Washington
CMS Releases Attestation Updates; Incentive Payments Top $870M The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released registration and payment totals (.pdf) for Meaningful Use Incentive Payments this week. The totals, tallied through September, indicated that $872 million for both Medicare and Medicaid have been awarded to successful attesters for Meaningful Use Stage 1 objectives. Registrations for the month of September peaked at nearly 24,000 eligible professionals and eligible hospitals, bringing total active registrants to 114,644. Other highlights of totals through September... read more
|
October 7, 2011 - Report from Washington
Meaningful Use Workgroup Hears About Stage 1 Experience, Looks towards Stage 3 In a meeting convened by the Health IT Policy Committee’s Meaningful Use Workgroup, over a dozen participants testified about their experience with Stage 1 Meaningful use and shared thoughts about how Stage 3 should look. One panel was comprised of providers who met the requirements for Meaningful Use, including two CHIME members: Tom Smith, CIO at NorthShore University Health System, and Denni McColm, CIO at Citizens Memorial Healthcare. They were joined by other health IT leaders in the provider community to answer a set of questions (.pdf) and identify strengths and weaknesses... read more
|
September 30, 2011 - Report from Washington
ONC Standards Committee Looks at Host of Recommendations in Final ‘Summer Camp’ Meeting Wednesday marked the end of summer for ONC’s Health IT Standards Committee (HITSC). During the past six months, a panel of sub-workgroups – collectively known as Standards Summer Camp – have been working on issues related to metadata, patient matching, syndromic surveillance, and specifications for the nationwide health information network (NwHIN). This month’s HITSC meeting reviewed the various Summer Camp recommendations and conclusions with opening remarks being made by Dr. Farzad Mostashari. Dr. Mostashari was forceful in his call to action for the... read more
|
September 23, 2011 - Report from Washington
Senate Reaches Deal On HHS Budget, House Stalls; Continuing Resolution Fails This week appropriators in both chambers of Congress took up bills to fund the Department of Health and Human Services. The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Health voted along party lines to pass a $158 billion spending bill for HHS, Labor and Education this week. The price tag falls $308 million short of the fiscal year 2011 totals, but Senate Republicans... read more
|
September 16, 2011 - Report from Washington
Health IT Takes Nation’s Capitol by Storm This was a banner week for health information technology, as stakeholders from across the country converged in Washington D.C. to celebrate National Health IT (NHIT) Week. CHIME was well represented as a sponsoring partner for many of the week’s events... read more
|
September 9, 2011 - Report from Washington
ONC Launches New Initiative, Website ONC has began implementation of a promise made in their five-year strategic plan, released earlier this spring, to enable a “learning health system” to understand population measures of health, performance, disease and quality while respecting patient privacy. In an announcement and webinar (.pdf) this week, ONC National Coordinator Dr. Farzad Mostashari, HHS CIO Todd Park, and director of the ONC’s Office of Standards and Interoperability Dr. Doug Fridsma launched... read more
|
September 2, 2011 - Report from Washington
CMS Announces eRx Incentive Changes to help Docs Avoid Penalties A final rule was issued this week by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that makes changes to the Electronic Prescribing (eRx) Incentive Program. The changes align previous eRx prescribing measures with Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Payments by indicating that a qualified electronic prescribing system includes certified EHR technology as defined by Meaningful Use regulations. The final rule (.pdf) broadens “significant hardship” extension categories... read more
|
August 26, 2011 - Report from Washington
CMS Launches Bundled Payment Pilot CMS called for volunteers this week to join a new pilot project, called the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative. The program will seek to align payments for services delivered across an episode of care, rather than paying for services separately, officials said. CMS’s Innovation Center (CMMI) will lead the initiative and officials from CMMI released a Request for Applications (RFA) outlining four possible approaches to bundled payments... read more
|
August 19, 2011 - Report from Washington
HIT Standards Committee Settles on Recommendations for Vocabulary, Reviews ‘Summer Camp’ Work ONC’s Health IT Standards Committee (HITSC) met for the last time this summer on Wednesday. During the day-long affair, members transmitted recommendations on an array of areas, including clinical quality and vocabulary standards, patient matching and Stage 2 certification. Of particular note is that HITSC endorsed a single set of vocabulary standards (.pdf) and a single guide... read more
|
August 12, 2011 - Report from Washington
ONC Asks for Input on Forthcoming Metadata Rules In what’s known as an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) this week published a 32-page document outlining how they foresee instituting metadata standards to support nationwide electronic health information exchange. Following intensive... read more
|
|
|
|
