American Hospital Association (AHA)

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Halamaka Takes a Deep Dive on the MACRA NPRM

As promised last week, I’ve read and taken detailed notes on the entire 962 page MACRA notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) so that you will not have to. Although this post is long, it is better than the 20 hours of reading I had to do! Here is everything you need to know from an IT perspective about the MACRA NPRM...What is the MACRA NPRM trying to achieve with regard to healthcare IT? The MACRA NPRM proposes to consolidate components of three existing programs, the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), the Physician Value-based Payment Modifier (VM), and the Medicare Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program for eligible professionals (EPs), creating a single set of reporting requirements. The rule would sunset payment adjustments under the current PQRS, VM, and the Medicare EHR Incentive Program for eligible professionals...

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HCA's Perlin Named Chair-Elect Designate Of AHA Board Of Trustees

Andis Robeznieks | ModernHealthcare.com | July 25, 2013

Dr. Jonathan Perlin, chief medical officer and president of clinical and physician services at Nashville-based HCA, was elected chair-elect designate of the American Hospital Association Board of Trustees during the AHA Health Forum and Leadership Summit in San Diego. Read More »

Health Care Officials: Lack Of Medicaid Expansion Will Put Va. Jobs, Hospitals At Risk

Hank Hayes | TimesNews | August 7, 2013

Southwest Virginia health care jobs and rural hospitals will be at risk unless state lawmakers agree to a Medicaid expansion, Wellmont Health System and Mountain States Health Alliance officials warned a room full of business leaders, insurers and government officials Wednesday. Read More »

Heavyweights Lead Charge For More Time On EHR Meaningful Use

Joseph Conn | Modern Publication | September 6, 2014

A host of heavyweight healthcare organizations is calling for HHS to back off of the requirement to meet meaningful-use criteria for all of 2015 for the federally funded electronic health-record incentive payment program, insisting that the future of the program is at stake...

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Hospitals Having Trouble Using EHRs To Report Quality Measures, AHA Study Shows

Joseph Conn | ModernHealthcare.com | July 26, 2013

Hospitals—even those with loads of experience using health information technology—are still having a tough time using electronic health-record systems to gather and report clinical quality measures, according to a new report summarizing a study by the American Hospital Association. Read More »

Hospitals Question Health Data Reporting Standards

John Pulley | Nextgov | September 21, 2012

Hospitals want to have a say in the automated quality reporting of electronic health records in order to ensure that they are “feasible, generate valid and reliable results, and have benefits that outweigh the costs,” the American Hospital Association said in a letter to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Read More »

How CMS Makes Quality Data Public While Still Keeping It Secret

Cheryl Clark | HealthLeaders Media | September 26, 2013

The federal government seems to want to keep safety data on eight hospital-acquired conditions (HACs) secret at the same time that it boasts how transparent it's being. Read More »

How Many Die From Medical Mistakes in U.S. Hospitals?

Marshall Allen | ProPublica | September 19, 2013

Now comes a study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety that says the numbers may be much higher — between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death, the study says.

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Nurses Launch New Campaign To Alert Public To Dangers Of Medical Technology And More

Press Release | National Nurses United | May 13, 2014

Nurses Launch New Campaign to Alert Public to Dangers of Medical Technology and Erosion of Care Standards

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Nurses' Union Knocks EHRs Hard

Bernie Monegain | Healthcare IT News | May 27, 2014

An image on the National Nurses United website highlights the campaign slogan. Launches national campaign to call attention to risks of healthcare IT Read More »

ONC Timeline for TEFCA Going Live in 2022

Today we are pleased to announce the timeline for the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA). The 21st Century Cures Act, signed by President Obama in 2016, calls on ONC to "develop or support a trusted exchange framework, including a common agreement among health information networks nationally."... The timeline released today-for completion of the Trusted Exchange Framework, the Common Agreement Version 1 and the Qualified Health Information Network (QHIN) Technical Framework (QTF) Version 1-establishes our goal to have this new network open for participation in the first quarter (Q1) of calendar year 2022.

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Plug and Play Healthcare: Open Middleware and the Emergence of a Functional Interoperability Framework

“A middleware architecture has been shown to be the best technological solution for addressing the problem of EHR interoperability. The middleware platform facilitates the transparent, yet secure, access of patient health data, directly from the various databases where it is stored. A server-based middleware framework supporting access to the various patient health data stores allows for a scalable, unified and standardized platform for applications to be developed upon.  The middleware architectural design has been successfully used to link data from multiple databases, irrespective to the database platform or where the database is located,” says Voltz. Read More »

Practices Buried Under MU 'Avalanche'

Mike Miliard | Healthcare IT News | October 23, 2014

'2015 will be an extremely challenging year for medical practices on the IT and compliance side'...

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Survey: Less Than 10% Of Physician Practices Ready For ICD-10

Dan Bowman | FierceHealthIT | February 5, 2014

Less than 10 percent of practices responding to a survey issued by the Medical Group Management Association are ready for the transition to ICD-10 [...]. While the number is up from 4.7 percent who indicated readiness last summer, it adds to a growing chorus of providers and payers who indicate they aren't ready to switch from using ICD-9 coding. Read More »

Telehealth, Blue Button Boost VA To “Most Wired” List

Jennifer Bresnick | EHR Intelligence | July 22, 2013

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has joined the ranks of the nation’s “Most Wired” hospitals for the first time this year, scooping a spot on the Hospitals & Health Networks’ honor roll due to its telehealth, mHealth, and patient engagement efforts. Read More »