21st Century Cures Act Proposes to Affect HIPAA Privacy Rule, PHI Restrictions, & ONC Certifications

In those bygone days before the rise of the internet and online search engines, people often cracked open phonebooks (remember those?) and turned to the Yellow Pages whenever they needed to find a local business or service (including healthcare). These days, however, very few people use phonebooks anymore (at least, not for locating businesses or finding phone numbers). I would challenge you to find just one person under the age of 20 who remembers ever seeing a phonebook in real life, but that’d just be a monumental waste of your time.

Electronic health records are revolutionizing the healthcare industry with more than 87 percent of physicians either in the process of implementing or already using an EHR throughout their day-to-day routines. More and more, EHRs are the glue that holds medical offices together. Efficient EHRs can significantly impact the quality of patient care, from wait times to quality of doctor consultations. Depending on if the EHR is integrated with a PM, it’s also the foundation for scheduling appointments, billing and other important administrative tasks. Unfortunately, EHRs are not all created equal and healthcare providers are unhappy with their present EHR software.

When you're running any sort of medical practice, regardless of specialty, it's important to focus on the human element of the business. When you spend time thinking about effective patient scheduling techniques, maintaining accurate electronic medical records and optimizing billing processes, it can be far too easy to view your practice as a business first. The truth, though, is that being professionally successful in the medical field is contingent, at least partially, upon maintaining excellent communication in all aspects of your practice. Even if you feel that you've cracked the code, you may want to take a look at these tips for improving communication within your practice:

Here we go again. With nearly five months until the mandated ICD-10 implementation deadline, it appears some lawmakers are championing for yet another delay of the international coding system. Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), a longtime detractor of ICD-10, has once again proposed a bill that would halt the upcoming compliance deadline. In what amounts to a duplicate of Poe's failed bid to stop ICD-10 back in 2013, the Cutting Costly Codes Act of 2015 aims to “prohibit the Secretary of Health and Human Services form replacing ICD-9 with ICD-10 in implementing the HIPAA code set standards.” Poe is hoping the 2015 version of this bill will receive more consideration from the House than it did two years ago, but as of now it's considered a long shot.

Security breaches are likely to be at the forefront of your concerns when it comes to managing your practice. Still, you may not be doing everything in your power to avoid them. Take a look at these helpful tips for managing your practice's security.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services developed the Physician Quality Reporting System to encourage providers to report quality of care data to Medicare. The ultimate intention is to develop a national health information infrastructure that will give the regulatory body data necessary to improve care quality across a wide variety of measures, such as patient engagement and treatment outcomes.

The healthcare industry is in a state of transformation. Providers have a lot to think about in terms of government mandates, from HIPAA compliance to meaningful use requirements to the ICD-10 transition to continuously updating Physician Quality Reporting System measures. Meeting the basic requirements to comply with healthcare IT mandates may be good enough for some, but the truly successful practices will strive to go above and beyond. Consider some of these suggestions for not only complying, but thriving, in the face of evolving healthcare mandates: