Owing to the heated debate in the Congress over enforcement of President Barack Obama’s healthcare bill, dubbed as Obamacare, for the first time in 17 years, the U.S. government has entered into a shutdown phase. According to estimates, nearly 700,000 federal employees would be hit by the shutdown. They will receive little or no payments Read more…
Healthcare
Are you ready for ICD-10?
The International Classification for Diseases (ICD) is now being evolved into a new system. ICD-10, as it is known, is a set of over 140,000 codes physicians all across the country will use come October 1, 2014, replacing the 30-year-old system of ICD-9. The ICD-10 includes more classification of diseases than its predecessor, and makes use Read more…
Data migration: Why is it important in Healthcare?
Nationwide, practices are shifting to new and better Electronic Health Records (EHRs) from their previous EMRs. Some practices find their current EMR systems old, outdated and incompatible with their practice management and billing software. Therefore, it becomes a priority for them to make the switch to Electronic Health Records (EHRs). But change is not easy. Read more…
Interoperability and finding the true SaaS EHR
Interoperability can be described as the ability of Electronic Health Record (EHR) software to meaningfully connect with various institutions involved in the healthcare IT model and effectively facilitate between them, the flow of information, such as test results, medical histories, summaries of care, lab reports, prescriptions, provider notes etc. These days, most U.S. physicians are Read more…
HIPAA Omnibus Rule – What now?
September 23, 2013 marked the end of the relaxation or grace period for the tougher, stricter implementation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s (HIPAA) Omnibus Rule. The Rule, which was enforced earlier in 2013 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), gave practices across the country the new guidelines to Read more…
Reasons why physicians hesitate in switching to Electronic Healthcare Systems
The day I sold my green 1998 Buick Century to settle a college loan and instead bought a run-down beat old Geo Metro, which was a stick, by the way, my heart shattered into a million tiny pieces and within each piece there were a million more tiny pieces. I was devastated beyond consolation. It Read more…
What to consider prior to switching to EHRs?
When medical practices switch to Electronic Health Records (EHRs), the transition is never easy and can be quite cumbersome for many. It can make the practices suffer in their day-to-day operations and they can easily lose their primary focus: patient care. Not only it can take months to implement the system, it requires extensive training Read more…
Reliability: EHRs or Paper?
Twenty Years ago, there was no concept of electronic health records. Doctors used paper-based systems and spent countless hours, filling out hundreds of thousands of papers every year. Consequently, they had less time, then they do now, to actually focus on the patient. Then, there was a revolution; A revolution of computers, of information technology Read more…
Ideal Healthcare: A fantasy or a Realistic Goal?
In 1999, when Jack Kevorkian, a doctor of medicine, was imprisoned for life for having medically assisted with 130 suicides in his professional career, not only did he get branded with the alias of Dr. Death, but it also opened a Pandora’s box of questions about how far the boundaries of medicine could be stretched. Read more…