Regulatory Compliance

It has been shown that active patient engagement results in fewer hospital readmissions, decreased medical errors, and less consequences resulting from poor communications. Engaging patients improves healthcare, saves money, and reduces errors. Meaningful Use has a program goal to deploy technology to raise patient engagement. The timing is ideal, since more patients are connected every […]

As a big fan of kevinmd.com, I enjoyed reading David Nash, MD’s take on how doctors need an “EMR 3.0” analytic engine for accountability and that creating an analytics tool that monitors gaps in care for a provider’s population is very important for accountable care. We also agree that as successful as the big EMR […]

Healthcare organizations are challenged with collaboration and coordination of patient care while struggling with many aspects of payment and quality. The shift from a traditional fee-for-service model to the ACO has many physicians worrying about a return to capitation versus risk and cost sharing. The key is managing the health of a fixed population of […]

I guess I could’ve used “fail” instead of “go on forever,” but I chose to use the latter here for a reason. For smaller initiatives, you occasionally get the former, but as is so often the case with those large enterprise endeavors, it’s the latter. I’ve seen this occur time and time again, a couple […]

In the financial services practice, compliance audits and vendor security evaluations are the norm for IT and operations. Our customers must meet standards to participate in the industry, to protect their assets, to protect their customers’ personally identifying information, and to meet their regulatory requirements as a business.  When IT organizations take part in completing […]

Sean Brooks, in his article 5 EHR predictions, very astutely anticipates several upcoming changes related to Electronic Health Records: 2013 will be the year of the replacement EHRs Many EHR vendors will disappear The cloud is here to stay I believe Sean is spot on and I would like to expand on this based on […]

One of the most feared and yet promising aspects of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), signed into law on March 23, 2010, is the voluntary five-year national pilot program on bundled payment – for Medicaid by 2012 and Medicare by 2013. Bundled payment pilots may involve hospitals (including long term care hospitals […]

The healthcare IT field is rapidly developing and changing. Emerging technology and updated regulations put pressure on healthcare providers and health plans to stay ahead of the curve. Perficient creates a monthly list that explores some of the current topics and issues in health IT. This list examines the most talked about issues and technologies […]

The topic of bundled payments, and how healthcare organizations and ACOs will respond, has been a vital point of discussion as of late. As a result, my favorite read last week was Bundled Payments: Challenges & Opportunities written by Sheldon Hamburger and Erica Jankelovitz, JD, on the HIMSS site. For the uninitiated, bundled payments are […]

There are two areas of focus in the ICD-10 conversion, each of which must be remediated/completed by October 1, 2014. Our initial thoughts, urges and efforts are towards technology or those systems that we must now use to do our jobs. Said another way, we need to update/upgrade the transactional systems, applications, and data repositories […]

With the dawn of every New Year, I am hopeful that I will keep my resolution to exercise, eat better and be more patient. This year, in addition to my “usual” resolutions noted above, I am also hoping that I can become an “engaged” patient. In fact, I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my […]

Based on the most recent meaningful use statistics published by CMS, the majority of Eligible Physicians submitting MU claims for Medicare have not been paid. Medicaid is only marginally better. Providers who are shopping for EMR systems must pay attention to the track record of the vendor and investigate claims these systems are MU compliant. […]