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ATA Announces Award Winners – UMMC Center for Telehealth Honored
The American Telemedicine Association (ATA) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2015 ATA Annual Awards. These awards recognize individuals and organizations on the forefront of healthcare technology for their significant contributions to the development of telemedicine. Winners will formally accept their awards at the ATA 2015 Annual Meeting and Trade Show, May 2-5, in Los Angeles at the Los Angeles Convention Center. “We are honored to recognize these outstanding individuals and institutions,†said Yulun Wang, PhD, President of ATA, and Chairman and CEO of InTouch Health. “Telemedicine is a tool to improve the quality, accessibility and affordability of healthcare, and these recipients serve as a testament to the field’s ability to improve each of those aspects of care.â€
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FY 2016 Hospital Inpatient PPS Proposal Rule Released
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has released the proposed rule to update fiscal year (FY) 2016 Medicare payment policies and rates under the Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment System and the Long-Term Care Hospital Prospective Payment System (PPS). This rule would affect discharges on or after October 1, 2015. CMS proposes to make a -0.8 percent documentation and coding adjustment and modifications to some of the clinical quality measure reporting and submission requirements to align the reporting period for the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs and the Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) program. No changes to the two-midnight policy are proposed, but CMS is considering feedback and expects to address the issue in the calendar year 2016 hospital outpatient PPS proposed rule.
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Pres. Obama signs overhaul of how Medicare pays doctors, ICD-10 safe
Ending years of last-minute fixes, President Barack Obama on Thursday signed legislation permanently changing how Medicare pays doctors, a rare bipartisan achievement by Democrats and Republicans. The bill overhauls a 1997 law that aimed to slow Medicare's growth by limiting reimbursements to doctors. Instead, doctors threatened to leave the Medicare program, and that forced Congress repeatedly to block those reductions. Obama signed the legislation Thursday in front of reporters and photographers, sitting alone and coatless in balmy spring weather on the patio of the White House Rose Garden. The Senate passed the bill two days ago; the House approved it in March.
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Psychiatric hospitals to get modest Medicare rate bump
The CMS is proposing that inpatient psychiatric facilities get a 1.6% rate increase from Medicare in fiscal 2016 under a proposed rule issued Friday. The proposed policy means Medicare would spend $80 million more on psychiatric facilities (PDF) in fiscal 2016 than in fiscal 2015. However, the increase is smaller than the 2.5% raise they received for the current year.
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Providers are sharing more data than ever. So why is everyone so unhappy?
It's easy to find condemnations of the lack of electronic data-sharing between providers these days. Take the Epocrates survey (PDF) released just before this year's Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference: Only 14% of the 2,922 doctors surveyed gave the industry a “B†or above for its data-sharing practices. And yet, based on vendor data, data-sharing is on the upswing. Despite the increase, though, experts believe the industry has a long way to go to achieve the level of exchange needed to support care coordination and consumer engagement. The problem is the usefulness of the information that's being shared. The goal isn't merely to push digital paper back and forth, but to exchange useful data.
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