AmericanEHR Blog

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released the January payment update to the EHR Incentive Program through January 2012. Here are some data from the EHR Incentive Payment Summary for January 2012. Medicare Data 22,937 Eligible Professionals (EP) received incentive payments $412,866,000 distributed Average per EP = $18,000 Top 4 Specialties: Family Medicine –…

Due to the interactive and real-time nature of an EHR, clinicians have a number of powerful tools at their fingertips that can be used to provide clinical guidance to patients and encourage healthy changes in behavior. With the advent of patient portals, personal health records, and mobile apps, there are now a number of additional…

Several news items surfaced yesterday (February 14, 2012) referencing comments made by acting CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner during the American Medical Association’s National Advocacy Conference. HealthIT News covered it here; Modern Healthcare here; and iHealthBeat here. Most of the commentary has been that CMS can only delay the implementation and that it is extremely unlikely…

Beginning on March 1, 2012, CMS will open an Appeals Portal for Eligible Professionals participating in the EHR Incentive program. (The portal for Eligible Hospitals is slated to be up by June 1, 2012.) Until such time as the Appeals Portal is up, the guidance available is here. According to this document, the types of…

As practices move towards the integration of more information in their EHR systems, a question that frequently comes up is how much information should be incorporated from imaging and radiology studies. This information is usually available in three primary formats: A narrative report received either as a faxed document or scanned into a commonly used…

Productivity can be defined as “the quality, state, or fact of being able to generate, create, enhance, or bring forth goods and services” (Dictionary.com). In a medical office, productivity refers to the number of patients seen and managed during the course of a defined period of work. The implementation of an EHR results in an…