By now I think most of us in healthcare IT have either spent time reading the requirements for Stage 1 of meaningful use. Others have listened to the many webinars that are helping hospitals and physicians understand “42 CFR Parts 412, et al” and “45 CFR Part 170”– the fancy name on the Federal Register [...]

I often ask my clients “Are you in Denial about your Denials” whereby the following questions are asked:
* Are you maximizing your commercial and managed care recovery?
* Do you track Denials by payor and the Reasons for Denials?
* Do you know what your Denial Rate is?
* Do you know what your [...]

With the excitement of Navin R. Johnson (Steve Martin) in the 1979 film “The Jerk” I was thrilled to see the government release the definition of meaningful use at the end of 2009. The nearly 600 page document was as big as the phonebook that contained Navin R. Johnson’s new listing and made him “somebody” [...]

As the use of the internet increasingly becomes a community blackboard, how does that affect the risk of privacy violations for provider’s patients? What are implications when a hospital employee has their picture taken with a patient and posts it on their Facebook? People are talking about patients they cared for on a [...]

Happy New Year. Over the holidays I read the article in the December 22, 2009 Healthcare Finance Newsweek which according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Institute published a report called “Squeezing every penny out of healthcare costs.”
The primary emphasis in 2010 will be on reducing costs in the healthcare industry. What bothers me [...]

I struggled for a week trying to come up with a topic for this week. Driving home last night from a Cub Scout meeting it came to me… a Top 10 to get us into 2010! Now, what stories in healthcare IT? Surely ARRA and HITECH. And defining and refining “meaningful use.” What about the [...]

Health Data Management reported on December 7 that the Department of Health and Human Services is on time in the agency’s effort to release rules regarding HITECH, a key component of ARRA (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act). Anybody seen them? Yeah, neither have I. They were supposed to be out on the same day [...]

Just in time for Halloween, the Department of Health and Human Services released an interim rule that helps HIPAA grow some fangs for enforcing violations. While the privacy advocates continue to say HIPAA doesn’t go far enough, at least this is a step in the right direction.
Georgina Verdugo, director of the HHS Office for [...]

If you’ve been attending the numerous seminars covering ARRA and HITECH stimulus money you know the vendors are trying to sell electronic health/medical records. And that is justifiably so. Without the technology there will be no way to achieve the meaningful use requirements. But the ultimate goal isn’t to have an EMR in every physician [...]

If you know anyone within our industry, then you know that the EMR vendors are on the prowl. No, not for customers looking to become ready to prove meaningful use in time to cash in. The vendors are hunting for people – healthcare information technology professionals to hire. It’s a great time to be looking [...]