Information Age Health Care: RELEASED: New Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for 2016

The proposed Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for FY 2016 was released today. After a quick read, some of the telehealth highlights are:

CMS proposes reimbursing these additional codes if the service is delivered via telehealth:

99356 & 99357 – both are under prolong service in the inpatient or observation setting requiring unit/floor time beyond the usual service

CMS also proposes adding the following end-stage renal disease codes: 90963, 90964, 90965, 90966 (the different codes go for different age groups). These codes are ESRD related services for home dialysis per full month.

Additionally, they’re adding “Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists as Practitioners for Telehealth Services” to the list of eligible providers. CRNAs Read More

Ethics and HIT

Challenges...
http://jamia.bmj.com/site/icons/amiajnl8946.pdf

patient safety should trump all other values; corporate concerns about liability and intellectual property ownership may be valid but should not over-ride all other considerations;
transparency and a commitment to patient safety should govern vendor contracts;
institutions are duty-bound to provide ethics education to purchasers and users, and should commit publicly to standards of corporate conduct; and
vendors, system purchasers, and users should encourage and assist in each others’ efforts to adopt best practices.

Meaningful Use (MU) & Nursing

Nurses are central to ensuring Meaningful Use ...

http://www.himss.org/ASP/topics_FocusDynamic.asp?faid=395

Bowles, K. (October, 2010). Achieving Meaningful Use with Information Technology: Telehealth Research. Online Journal of Nursing Informatics (OJNI),14 (3). Available at http://ojni.org/14_3/Bowles.pdf

Bowles, K.,(February, 2011) ONJNI....Achieving Meaningful Use With Decision Support Research http://tinyurl.com/4ol9r6p

CMS & MU:

Meeting the Requirements for Meaningful Use: Attestation Calculator

HIMMS:

Meaningful Use OneSource assists eligible healthcare providers and professionals in understanding Meaningful Use Stage 1 and Stage 2 requirements, timelines, and the proposed rule. Our dynamic and living body of documents and tools fully prepares you to:

Meet Meaningful Use proposed Stage 2 certification criteria and standards
Receive Medicare and Medicaid incentive funding and avoid penalties
Implement Meaningful Use specifications practically and successfully
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Information Age Health Care

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RELEASED: New Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for 2016

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