Showing posts with label CMS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CMS. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt:named 12 communities: CMS EHR Demonstration project

Congratulations and good luck!
We New Yorkers anxiously await expansion of the project. SV


HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt today named 12 communities that will participate in a national Medicare demonstration project that provides incentive payments to physicians for using certified electronic health records (EHR) to improve the quality of patient care. The five-year, first-of-its-kind project is expected to improve the quality of care provided to an estimated 3.6 million Americans.

“The use of electronic health records, and of health information technology as a whole, has the ability to transform the way health care is delivered in our nation,” Secretary Leavitt said. “We believe that EHRs can help physicians deliver better, more efficient care for their patients, in part by reducing medical errors. This project is designed to demonstrate these benefits and help increase the use of this technology in practices where adoption has been the slowest – at the individual physician and small practice level.”

The communities selected to work with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on the EHR demonstration project range from county- and state- level to multi-state collaborations. They include:

Alabama
Delaware
Jacksonville, FL (multi-county)
Georgia
Maine
Louisiana
Maryland/Washington, DC
Oklahoma
Pittsburgh, PA (multi-county)
South Dakota (multi-state)
Virginia
Madison, WI (multi-county)

HHS.GOV

Thursday, May 08, 2008

CMS (Medicare) and South Carolina offer PHR (Personal Health Record)

It is only for fee for service Medicare.
No links with Medicare Advantage, Medicare Part D or Medicaid. Too bad.
Patients can add to it however. Its a good start but needs the additional links. SV


MyPHRSC is a free and secure electronic Personal Health Record that stores your Medicare claims history for the past 24 months in one convenient place. Updated daily, the health record provides you with one place where you can track your medical history. With MyPHRSC, you don’t have to search through your paper records to find what you need. You can access your records in one place, wherever you are, and whenever you need them. With MyPHRSC, you can view and manage the following Medicare claims information:

Provider Visits
Hospitalizations
Medical conditions

MYPHRSC

Monday, April 07, 2008

CMS (Medicare) e-Prescribing update

The required tools are currently available in most stand-alone e-Prescribing products and many EHRs. SV

The final e-prescribing rule was placed on display at the Federal Register on April 2, 2008. The final rule provides three electronic tools for use in e-prescribing:

Formulary and benefit transactions: gives prescribers information about which drugs are covered by a Medicare beneficiary's prescription drug benefit plan.

Medication history transactions:
provides prescribers with information about medications a beneficiary is already taking, including those prescribed by other providers, to help reduce the number of adverse drug events.

Fill Status notifications:
allows prescribers to receive an electronic notice from the pharmacy telling them that a patient's prescription has been picked up, not picked up, or has been partially filled, to help monitor medication adherence in patients with chronic conditions.

The final rule also adopts the National Provider Identifier (NPI) for e-prescribing under Medicare Part D, and retires NCPDP SCRIPT 5.0 in favor of the upgraded NCPDP SCRIPT 8.1.


CMS Overview
CMS pdf

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

CMS (Medicare) Home Health Pay for Performance demonstration


The Home Health Pay for Performance demonstration will offer incentive payments to a sample of Medicare home health agencies for maintaining high levels of quality care, or making significant improvement s in the quality of their services. HHP4P will be conducted in Illinois, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, California between Jan. 08 and Dec. 09.

An incentive pool will be generated out of savings accrued from the reduction in the use of more costly Medicare services. The pool will be shared with home health agencies that produced the highest level of patient care or produced the greatest improvement in patient care as measured by seven OASIS measures.

• Incidence of Acute Care Hospitalization
• Incidence of Any Emergent Care
• Improvement in Bathing
• Improvement in Ambulation / Locomotion
• Improvement in Transferring
• Improvement in Management of Oral Medications
• Improvement in Status of Surgical Wounds

Seventy-five percent of the incentive pool will be shared with those agencies in the top 20% of the highest level of patient care. Twenty-five percent of the incentive pool will be shared with the top 20% of those making the biggest improvements in patient care. If there are no savings, there will be no incentives.

CMS

Friday, November 16, 2007

CMS Proposes E-Prescribing Standards

On Nov. 13, HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt announced that the department, through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), is proposing rules to adopt new standards to advance the use of electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) for formulary and benefit as well as medication history transactions used under the Medicare prescription drug benefit. The proposed standards will be published in the Nov. 16 Federal Register.

The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 requires CMS to adopt final standards for e-prescribing. All providers and pharmacies transmitting prescriptions electronically for Medicare-covered drugs are required to comply with any CMS standards in effect. The standards cover:

Transactions between prescribers and dispensers for new prescriptions; refill requests and responses; prescription change requests and responses; prescription cancellation, request, and response; and related messaging and administrative transactions
Eligibility and benefits queries and responses between prescribers and Part D sponsors
Eligibility queries between dispensers and Part D sponsors

E-prescribing standards (104 pages)

Friday, November 09, 2007

CMS Medicare to reward use of Electronic medical records and e-prescribing in 2008

In addition to PQRI bonuses related to HIT (up to 1.5% of the their total allowed charges), CMS has pushed back the deadline for conversion to e-prescribing (non-faxed) to January 1, 2009. SV


The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) today issued a final physician payment rule designed to improve accuracy of Medicare payments and give physicians and health care professionals additional financial incentives to provide higher quality and value in the delivery of care.

These structural measures, which focus on whether a health care professional uses electronic health records and/or electronic prescribing, emphasize the importance of this technology for delivery of high-quality health care services. Physician and non-physician professionals not meeting PQRI measures will be allowed to participate by reporting on their use of health information technology. The Physician Assistance and Quality Initiative Fund will provide $1.35 billion for physician payment and quality improvement initiatives for services furnished in 2008.

CMS