The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have ‘upped the ante’ when it comes to Meaningful Use audits in 2015. Figliozzi and Company were the sole auditors for Meaningful Use until 2015. This year, however, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) is performing its own round of Meaningful Use audits, which differ slightly from the Figliozzi and Company in that they are focusing on certain measures over a three year period. Figliozzi and Company reviews all of the Meaningful Use measures for a single attestation period. The OIG has the following main goals behind their audits:

Back in early May, I posted a blog article on the approved draft of the 21st Century Cures Act—a bill designed to streamline funding and hasten approvals for new biomedical research, cures, and medical treatments for rare, terminal, and chronic conditions. In that article, I also promised that I would keep everyone up to speed as things developed. Well… things are developing. Don’t worry, though… it looks like mostly good things are happening, for once.

Some of you may have read my blog article on the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), and the decade long history of “doc fixes” leading up to it, posted back in April. At that time, there were certain details of the new law that were still being ironed out. And there are a number of things that still remain in development limbo when it comes to how MACRA is going to play out in the future (even Paul Spitalnic, Chief Actuary of the CMS, has claimed that MACRA is not sustainable past the year 2048).

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has teamed up with the American Medical Association (AMA) to provide additional measures designed to ease the ICD-10 transition when the Oct. 1 deadline approaches.

Interoperability. To say it’s a priority for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would be an understatement. As an added effort to encourage interoperability between vendors and providers, the CMS is calling on everyone in the medical community to – for lack of a better word – snitch.

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

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.

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.