Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)

See the following -

A Ransomware Epidemic And An Overdue National Health IT Safety Center

Dean Sittig and Hardeep Singh | Health Affairs Blog | July 29, 2016

A rapid increase in computerization of health care organizations (HCOs) around the world has raised their profile as lucrative targets for cyber-criminals. Recently there has been a spate of high-profile ransomware attacks involving hospitals’ electronic health record (EHR) data.Briefly, ransomware attacks commonly start when a user is conned into clicking an internet link or opening a malicious email attachment. Malware, or software that is intended to damage or disable the computer, is then downloaded and rapidly encrypts data on that computer and attempts to reach out to other computers on the same network to encrypt data on those computers as well; consequently, all encrypted data is inaccessible...

Read More »

2015: End Of The Road For Meaningful Use?

Frank Irving | Medical Practice Insider | January 5, 2015

You can lead doctors to EHR systems — but you can't make them attest.  A poll of nearly 2,000 physicians, in fact, reveals that 55 percent do not plan to attest for meaningful use Stage 2 in 2015...

Read More »

9 Healthcare Innovations Driven By Open Data

Joel Gurin | Information Week | November 18, 2014

...IBM and the Cleveland Clinic announced that Watson was turning to more serious pursuits and had "enrolled" in medical school. It's been a productive partnership: Last month, they launched a new Watson program using genomic data to find the best options for cancer patients...

Read More »

A Doctor's Declaration Of Independence

Daniel F. Craviotto | The Wall Street Journal | April 28, 2014

It's time to defy health-care mandates issued by bureaucrats not in the healing profession.

Read More »

A Health Hack Wake-Up Call

Niam Yaraghi | US News & World Report | April 1, 2016

Hospitals went digital almost overnight, but they neglected to prioritize patient data protection. U.S. hospitals appear to be under a new type of IT hacking attack: crypto-ransomware. Hackers have changed their approach and instead of stealing patient data, they are now locking down the computer systems of hospitals and asking for a ransom, in bitcoin, in order to allow hospitals to have access to their own computers...

Read More »

A Welcome Extension, For Most

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | December 9, 2013

After months of physicians, hospitals and IT groups calling for more time to complete Meaningful Use, the federal government responded. Although not everyone is pleased. Read More »

About 25 Percent Of HealthCare.gov Applications Have Errors

Grant Gross | Computerworld | December 6, 2013

An estimated one in four user applications sent from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' HealthCare.gov to insurance providers have errors introduced by the website, including missing applications, an official with the agency said Friday. Read More »

After A 'Bridge' Year For Meaningful Use, 2014 Could Be Painful For Providers

Marla Durben Hirsch | FierceEMR | January 2, 2014

The electronic health record world covered a lot of ground in 2013, some of it positive, some of it not. Here's our annual look at the top stories that dominated the headlines in FierceEMR in 2013--and a few that we might expect to see in 2014. Read More »

AHRQ Releases Draft Guide for Registry Interoperability: Does Public Health Have a Role?

On January 11, 2019, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) released a draft Addendum to the Third Edition of Registries for Evaluating Patient Outcomes: A User's Guide called Tool and Technologies for Registry Interoperability. AHRQ has long written about registries - largely from a research standpoint - and I have been following this from afar for some time. This new guide is focused on helping those who both create and use registries understand the issue surrounding leveraging external data to improve registry completeness, accuracy, and usefulness. This report covers lots of ground and does a good job of summarizing important subtopics. Each chapter is overflowing with footnotes and sources.

Read More »

AMA Calls For Reduced Requirements, Penalties For MU Program

Beth Walsh | Innovation + Technology | May 13, 2014

The American Medical Association (AMA) has a long list of ideas to make the Meaningful Use (MU) program better for physicians and shared its recommendations in a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC)...

Read More »

AMA Responds To CMS Regarding Meaningful Use Penalties For Eligible Professionals

Press Release | American Medical Association | December 17, 2014

"The American Medical Association (AMA) is appalled by news from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) today that more than 50 percent of eligible professionals will face penalties under the Meaningful Use program in 2015, a number that is even worse than we anticipated...

Read More »

AMA Takes Issue With Meaningful Use Penalties

Marisa Torrieri | HealthcareDIVE | December 19, 2014

American Medical Association president-elect Steven J. Sack, MD, issued a statement expressing his organization's disapproval of CMS' forthcoming penalties against physicians who aren't meeting meaningful use requirements under its EHR Incentive Program...

Read More »

AMA: ICD-10 Costs More Expensive Than Prior Estimates

Dan Bowman | FierceHealthIT | February 12, 2014

ICD-10 implementation costs will be more expensive--in some cases more than three times previous cost estimates--for physician practices, according to updated research published Wednesday by the American Medical Association. Read More »

AMIA Calls For Patient Access to Complete Health Information

Jacqueline Belliveau | EHR Intelligence | June 2, 2016

AMIA has urged the federal government to repeal a regulation on unstructured EHR data that could help patients access their health information. At the 2016 ONC Annual Meeting, the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) has asked the federal government to repeal the prohibition on the use of unstructured data in order to help patients access all of their health information...

Read More »

Amida Releases Enhanced Blue Button Software Component

Press Release | Amida | September 2, 2014

Amida is pleased to announce the second release of its Data Reconciliation Engine (DRE). The DRE is a Blue Button-branded software component that supports the aims of the Blue Button Initiative, a nationwide public-private effort that enables patients and consumers to gain easy access to their own health information...

Read More »