2010 Final Rule Simplifies E-Prescribing Process

18. November 2009

New financial incentives for EHR. But think long & hard before you join the EHR conga line, analysts warn practices. CMS’s 2010 Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule spells out the income opportunities that practices can seize if they want to collect the maximum allowable reimbursement from Medicare next year, and for the first time, electronic health records can be part of a practices PQRI measures. In particular, the Final Rule indicates that in 2010, physician practices will be able to earn a PQRI incentive payment of 2 percent of their estimated total Part B allowed charges — and CMS will offer additional reporting options to help ease that process. CMS will add 30 individual PQRI measures and six measures groups on which individual eligible professionals may report, the Final Rule indicates. The Final Rule will also add an electronic health record (EHR)-based reporting mechanism, which will “promote the adoption and use…

Predict Your ARRA Dollars With This Handy Incentive Calculator

27. October 2009

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By now we’ve all heard that hospitals that meet ARRA’s criteria get to collect incentives starting at $2 million. The government will then adjust that figure based on your hospital’s Medicare discharges and the year that you make the EHR transition. Buy-and-install or Internet based? Jim Sheldon-Dean shows you how to make the right EHR decision for your health care organization. Just how much will your facility get? That can be a head scratcher. Calculate your anticipated share of funding with this breakdown of the Medicare incentive formula. Formula: For acute care prospective payment system (PPS) hospitals the formula is: Initial Amount times Medicare Share times Transition Factor = Total Incentive Amount The “Initial Amount” is $2 million plus $200 for each discharge between the 1,150th and 23,000thdischarge in a 12-month period. There is no credit for the first 1,149 discharges or discharges…

CMS Begins to Distribute Millions Earmarked for EHRs

14. October 2009

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Get your electronic health record in place so you can benefit from government bonuses. Late this summer, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that the government would appropriate over a billion dollars in grants to help healthcare providers implement electronic health records (EHRs), and it didn’t take long for the first awards to be distributed. On Sept. 29, HHS announced that it had awarded $27.8 million to health center-controlled networks and large health centers to implement EHRs and other health information technology initiatives. The goal of the funding is to improve productivity, accuracy, and quality via the use of EHRs. “These funds to expand and upgrade electronic health records systems will make a huge difference for health centers struggling to provide health care to the growing number of people in need,” said Mary Wakefield, PhD, RN, administrator of HHS’s Health Resources and Service Administration, in a Sept. 29 statement.

Need EHR Help? HHS Plans to Open 70 Regional Centers That Can Assist You

22. August 2009

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Kathleen Sebelius Plus: HHS officials give an ETA for their ‘meaningful use’ definition. Need a jump start to institute your electronic health record (EHR) system? The government plans to give the program a shot in the arm by injecting $1.2 billion in grants that will go toward helping healthcare providers implement EHRs. The grants will go toward two areas, said Kathleen Sebelius, Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, during an Aug. 20 conference call with members of the healthcare media. AUDIO: Is someone besides HHS helping you out with EHR? How to make sure well-intentioned EHR deals don’t run afoul of Stark. With health care attorney Wayne Miller. The first goal includes $598 million to fund about 70 regional centers. The centers will “support physicians and hospitals in the adoption and meaningful use of EHRs,” noted David Blumenthal, MD, CMS’s national coordinator for health information technology, during the call.

EHR: Show Your Physicians What’s In It For Them

30. July 2009

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Drop the paper chart, Tiger. If the clinicians at your hospital or health system are carping about your EHR system’s learning curve, here’s one way to win their buy-in. Show them how your EHR can reduce denials for their reimbursement on the Part B side. An EHR can eradicate a common reason physicians get denials for Part B services in Part A settings — a missing chief complaint, explains Jules Enatsky, RT, BSN, CPC-H, a senior consultant with JA Thomas & Associates. When several different specialists are seeing a hospital patient, for example, they begin their notes by commenting how the patient is responding to a treatment or medication, without documenting why the patient is being treated, Enatsky writes in The Coding Edge. “If an admitting physician and one or two consulting providers all bill subsequent inpatient care…

Tool Reveals Whether E-Prescribe Will Get Bang For Your Buck

15. July 2009

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve all heard that physicians are eligible for e-prescribing bonuses, but will the cost of a new system or upgrade be worth it? The American Medical Association (AMA) has unveiled a new tool to help physician practices decide about e-prescribe. “A recent survey found about 30 percent of physician participants use an e-prescribing system in their practice,” said Joseph Heyman, MD, an AMA board member, in a June 30 statement. “This is a sizeable increase from the 13 percent who said the same at the end of last year.” The AMA’s online portal allows physician practices to calculate time savings and eligibility for incentive payments. Comparison shop: Potential e-prescribe buyers can access the AMA’s “system finder tool” that selects three systems that might suit your practice, based on your responses to a questionnaire. (Note to HIT vendors: Visit the site to see how you and your competitors stack up.) You an access the

HIT Grants: How To Get Your Share of ARRA’s $48 Billion

16. June 2009

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Put these grant opportunities on your radar–and stay tuned. Your health system may qualify for millions in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding to support your HIT initiatives — that’s in addition to the Medicare and Medicaid EHR adoption incentives. Much of the ARRA funding will become grants that health centers can apply for, said Michael Paddock, CEO of Grants Office in Rochester, N.Y., at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) annual conference in Chicago. Responding to these funding opportunities will be similar to what you’ve done for previous grants; the difference will be in the dollar amount, which could reach to hundreds of millions, Paddock said. Still, the ARRA funding will not stretch far enough to fund EHR across all healthcare agencies. Be on the lookout for loan programs to fill in the gaps, he added. AUDIO TRAINING EVENT: $44,000 for…

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