Electronic Health Records (EHRs) - Meaningful Use

The House Energy and Commerce Committee last night voted 28-23 along party lines to approve legislation to extend funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program through fiscal year 2022.
Beginning on Jan. 2, 2018, eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals attesting to the Medicare Electronic Health Record Incentive Program will submit their 2017 meaningful use attestations to the QualityNet (Qnet) secure portal, according to a notice on the Centers for Medicare &…
The House Energy & Commerce Health Subcommittee today approved AHA-supported legislation (H.R. 3120) that would remove from the HITECH Act of 2009 a requirement that the Health and Human Services Secretary make meaningful use standards for electronic health records more stringent over time.
Primary care physicians spend more than half of their workday performing data entry and other tasks with electronic health records, according to a new study in the Annals of Family Medicine. The study included 142 physicians at family medicine clinics associated with the University of Wisconsin-…
About 80.5% of hospitals had adopted at least a basic electronic health record in 2015, up from 75.2% in 2014, according to a study reported online last month by the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. Based on the Information Technology Supplement to the AHA Survey, the study…
The 2009 HITECH Act has spurred “large gains” in hospitals’ adoption of electronic health records, according to a study published yesterday in Health Affairs. Before the federal government implemented the HITECH incentives, EHR adoption rates for eligible hospitals rose 3.2% annually, the…
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) August 2 issued its hospital inpatient prospective payment system (PPS) and long-term care hospital (LTCH) PPS final rule for fiscal year (FY) 2018. Select highlights of the final rule related to the inpatient PPS follow.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services late today issued its hospital inpatient prospective payment system final rule for fiscal year 2018. The rule will increase rates by 1.2% in FY 2018, after accounting for inflation and other adjustments required by law.