Almost all U.S. hospitals couldn't meet the federal government's meaningful-use standards and qualify for subsidy payments for electronic health-record systems under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, according to a report published Thursday in the policy journal Health Affairs.
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Healthcare providers in the nation’s Gulf Coast may spend some time this week answering questions for Hurricane Katrina retrospectives such as this one. But they will be busier renovating facilities, appealing for more federal assistance, and managing the effects of health reform, more recent disasters and strapped state budgets—all during hurricane season.
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Jerry Reed recalls clearly the day when Sen. Harry Reid turned to him at a congressional committee hearing in 1996 and asked why suicide rates in America were considerably higher in the nation's Western mountain states.
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Healthcare systems in rural America could benefit from some of the $1.8 billion in federal dollars released today and marked for projects to expand broadband access.
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Ingenix's voracious appetite for acquisitions is fueled in part by federal subsidies for electronic health-record systems under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.Two of the three deals announced in the past month by Ingenix, an Eden Prairie, Minn.-based division of insurer UnitedHealth Group, point to the stimulus law as an important driver for the deals.
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Healthcare experts are questioning whether outside auditors for the Medicare program are prepared to take on a new type of advanced audit that addresses a touchy and personal subject: the necessity of a patient's care.
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State licensing authorities might question whether recovery audit contractors' determining whether particular services are medically necessary is in fact “practicing medicine.”
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The CMS has approved the first medical-necessity review audits for the Recovery Audit Contractor program, according to agency officials.
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The CMS has awarded $5.75 million in federal matching funds to six states and the District of Columbia to help Medicaid providers expand the use of electronic health records. The six states receiving the matching funds are Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and West Virginia. The funding, provided for under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, is earmarked for a health information technology incentives program.
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HHS has withdrawn from administrative review a proposed final version of a federal rule that requires hospitals, physicians, health plans and other specified handlers of patient health records to notify patients in the event their personally identifiable health information is exposed by a data security breach.
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