The following is an excerpt from an article on Healthcare Finance News. It was written by Henry Powderly. It’s Oct. 1 and the ICD-10 diagnostic coding vocabulary is in effect. Now what? According to one expert, that answer depends on how prepared you are and how much money your organization has on hand. “For some, the transition will be relatively seamless,” said Pam Jodock, senior director of health business solutions for HIMSS North America. “Others may experience a loss in productivity as office staff familiarizes themselves with new coding tools and processes.”

The following is an excerpt from an article on Diagnostic Imaging. It was written by Avery Hurt. Many practices are stressing over ICD-10 training — and spending lots of money on computer programs, outside training courses, and thanks to implementation delays, refresher courses. And no wonder. Good training is crucial. The better trained you are by Oct. 1, the less money you are likely to lose because of refused claims. In the stress of getting up to speed in time for the rollout, however, many people are approaching ICD-10 training with a grim determination that would rival that of the most draconian algebra teacher. It doesn't have to be this way.

The following is an excerpt from an article on Medpage Today. It was written by Joyce Frieden. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) may relax some of its rules for implementing Meaningful Use requirements, the agency announced Thursday. "Meaningful Use" refers to provisions in the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which authorized incentive payments through Medicare and Medicaid to clinicians and hospitals that use electronic health records (EHRs) in a meaningful way to significantly improve clinical care.

The following is an excerpt from our whitepaper, The ICD-10 Transition: How to Properly Deal with the Extension. Keep in mind that the transition to ICD-10 can or will affect everyone in yourorganization or practice, including doctors and nurses, billing personnel, coders, managers, the IT department, and more depending on the size of the entity.

The following is an excerpt from an article that appeared on EHR Intelligence. It was written by Kyle Murphy, PhD. The most recent run of ICD-10 acknowledgement testing by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) revealed no problems with the Medicare Fee-for-service (FFS) claims systems but did show a lower rate nationally of accepted test claims as compared to previous testing in March. “Acceptance rates improved throughout the week with Friday’s acceptance rate for test claims at 87 percent,” the federal agency said in Medicare Learning Network (MLN) Connects update on Monday. “Nationally, CMS accepted 76 percent of total test claims. Testing did not identify any issues with the Medicare FFS claims systems.”

The following is an excerpt from an article on Corrections.com. It was written by Girish Navani. Based on recent research, there is a need for correctional facilities across the nation to implement electronic health records (EHRs) to ensure that inmates get the proper care. According to a national nonprofit group, The Treatment Advocacy Center, prisons and jails in the United States held over 356,000 inmates with severe mental illnesses in 2012. In fact, state prisons around the nation are urging government officials to implement digital health records.

The following is an excerpt from an article that appeared on Modern Healthcare. It was written by Joseph Conn. Hospitals are further along in upgrading their electronic health-record systems to where they need to be than had seemed possible only a month ago, according to new data from the CMS. After getting off to a sputtering start, nearly 3,700 hospitals have attested to meeting the program's meaningful-use requirements through Dec. 1 this year. More are expected to attest as the filing period draws to a close at the end of this month, Elisabeth Myers, of CMS' office of e-health standards and services, said in a report to the federally chartered Health Information Technology Policy Committee.

The following is an excerpt from an article from Diabetes News Journal. It was written by Leonor Mateus Ferreira. There are still a significant number of people in the United States suffering from diabetes that are undiagnosed according to a collaborative study between researchers in the U.S. and in the United Kingdom, and recently published at the CMAJ Open journal. The research concluded that performing electronic health record (EHR) data analysis in patients may help determine undiagnosed diabetes, as it reduces both the time and the costs spent in identifying risk individuals.

The following excerpt is from an article from Midsize Insider. It was written by Marissa Tejada. Electronic health records (EHR) are predicted to offer savings in the tens of billions to the worldwide health care industry, changing health care in the process. As industries move full force into the Internet of Things (IoT), midsize firms in any industry can be poised to innovate and gain productivity.

The following is an excerpt from an article on Forbes. It was written by Glenn Watt, the Corporate Information Security Officer at Medidata Solutions. What are we talking about when we talk about data security? We are really talking about how we maintain the confidentiality of data to make sure only approved people have access to see that data, as well as the integrity of the data to ensure only authorized people can modify the data if needed. The third area is to ensure data availability to its owner at a time and place of their choosing and that no one is blocking that availability. So data security boils down to confidentiality, integrity and availability.