MACRA and Meaningful Use. MIPS and Advancing Care Information. You've probably heard these phrases quite a bit over the past week - and for good reason. With the announcement that under the newly proposed MACRA rule, Meaningful Use would end on Jan. 1, 2017, has been a big story in the healthcare industry. The proposed rule would end Meaningful Use, and instead, create Advancing Care Information, a program that would be incorporated into the Merit-based Payment System (MIPS). As of now, these changes would only affect eligible providers and not hospitals. So as an eligible provider, what exactly do you need to know about all of these proposed changes?

In January, Nextech acquired plastic surgery EMR and office management provider SupraMed, further cementing the company’s commitment to delivering top-tier specialty-specific EMR and practice management solutions. We caught up with Dr. Robert Pollack, SupraMed founder and board certified plastic surgeon, to tell us more about what the acquisition means to the plastic surgery market.

Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a major change was coming to the healthcare IT industry - the MACRA proposed rule would end Meaningful Use, as it's conducted today, on Jan. 1, 2017. Instead, Meaningful Use would be replaced by Advancing Care Information, which would be implemented into the Merit-based Payment System (MIPS). Those within the healthcare IT industry reacted quickly to the big news with responses ranging from hopeful to critical. RELATED: MACRA Proposed Rule Will Replace Meaningful Use for Eligible Providers

In January, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt announced that Meaningful Use "as it has existed would be effectively over and replaced with something better" in 2016. Now we know how. Today, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a proposed rule for Medicare Access and CHIP Authorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) integration. As a result, Meaningful Use reporting - as it's conducted today - would end as of Jan. 1, 2017.

ICD-10 may be only six months old in the United States, but new codes have already been proposed for October 1, 2016. Previously, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had placed a five-year code freeze on ICD-10 to help ease the healthcare industry into the new code set. Well, that ended in late March. The CDC announced proposed, new ICD-10-CM codes, while the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced proposed, new ICD-10-PCS codes. In total, approximately 1,943 new ICD-10-CM codes were announced along with 3,651 new ICD-10-PCS codes.

Data breaches are becoming an all too common occurrence in today's society. That could be quite an understatement for the healthcare industry, according to one report. An Internet Security Threat Report conducted by Symantec found that 39 percent of all data breaches in 2015 were within the healthcare industry.

Ransomware is becoming more common and the healthcare industry has recently been a favorite target of hackers. With five ransomware attacks on healthcare organizations in the last month, healthcare organizations need to pay more attention to combatting ransomware.