If your front office does not operate efficiently, it has a negative ripple effect throughout your entire practice. The Meaningful Use program, mandatory E-Prescribing, and health system reform initiatives at the state level are taking their toll on many practices. The transition towards Electronic Health Records and adaptation to new workflow processes is creating significant…

In our ongoing effort to improve the quality and comprehensiveness of EHR Satisfaction Ratings, we have added new features that will enhance your ability to evaluate satisfaction data. New Features Satisfaction ratings now include the total number of ratings for each category of questions (“n” value) as well as the total number of ratings submitted…

The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation announced a new round of grant opportunities. Here is what the press release stated: “The Health Care Innovation Challenge will award up $1 billion in grants to applicants who will implement the most compelling new ideas to deliver better health, improved care and lower costs to people enrolled…

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT announced last week that Regional Extension Centers have reached 100,000 physicians. The press release included this statement: This commitment by more than one-third of all primary care providers nationwide to work with their Regional Extension Center (REC) to participate in the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health…

Earlier today CMS extended the deadline for 5010 compliance by 90 days; the original deadline was January 1, 2012. ASC X12 Version 5010 is the transaction used to submit electronic claims to payers. Many of the large clearing houses and state Medicaid options had publicly stated that they were not going to be ready to…

In a November 1, 2011 Editorial, Kate Ackerman, Managing Editor for iHealthBeat, wrote an article titled “Health IT: A Boon or Bane for Patient Safety?” In the article, Ackerman summarized the findings of a meeting of the American Medical Informatics Association’s 35th Annual Symposium on Biomedical and Health Informatics, and pointed out that although Health…