New York eHealth Collaborative, New York’s
regional extension center, has selected
e-MDs as a preferred EHR vendor.
Apollo Medical Holdings, a provider of
hospitalist and multidisciplinary care
management services, has acquired
Pulmonary Critical Care Management, a
provider of management services to
the Los Angeles Lung Center.
Covenant HealthCare north of Detroit, MI,
will utilize Merge Healthcare’s iConnect
software at its 600-bed facility.
East Orange General Hospital in New
Jersey has selected GE’s integrated
EHR, financial, and administrative
application.
Mon General Hospital in Morgantown, WV,
is installing Merge Healthcare’s full suite
of enterprise-level cardiology solutions.
CMS Adopts Operating Rules for Two
Additional HIPAA Transactions
On July 8 the Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services published
an interim final rule adopting operating rules for two HIPAA transactions:
eligibility for a health plan and healthcare claim status.
CMS acted under the direction of
Congress, which in the 2010 Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act
established new requirements for
administrative transactions intended
to improve the utility of the existing
HIPAA transactions and reduce administrative costs.
The transaction standards adopted
under HIPAA enable electronic data
interchange through a common inter-
change structure, intended to mini-
mize the industry’s reliance on mul-
tiple formats.
“Operating rules…define the rights
and responsibilities of all parties, se-
curity requirements, transmission for-
mats, response times, liabilities, ex-
ception processing, error resolution
and more, in order to facilitate suc-
cessful interoperability between data
systems of different entities,” CMS
writes in the rule.
Operating rules augment standards
in three important ways, CMS continues: they contain additional requirements that help implement the standard in a more consistent manner
Royal Victoria Hospital in Ontario, Canada,
has chosen Omnicell’s medication and
supply management system.
Science Applications International Corporation has entered into a definitive
agreement to acquire Vitalize Consulting
Solutions, a provider of clinical, business, and IT services for healthcare
enterprises.
Baptist Memorial Health Care in Tennessee has selected RelayHealth’s health
information exchange software.
Healthcare Data Services entered into
a three-year contract with South
Shore Physician Hospital Organization
in Massachusetts to provide data
management services.
The Rhode Island Regional Extension Center
has selected ABILITY Network as a health
information service provider.
The Milwaukee Health Care Partnership
and Wisconsin Health Information Exchange
have selected MyHealthDIRECT’s ED
scheduling and patient management
system.
Florida-based Meli Orthopedics has selected EHR tools from ChartLogic. ¢
Pilot: E-Submission to Review Contractors
On August 1 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services launched
the Electronic Submission of Medical
Documentation (esMD) pilot program,
which allows healthcare providers to
electronically submit medical documents to Medicare review contractors
to support Medicare claims.
Under the pilot, providers can use
selected health information vendors
to electronically transmit requested
information. Currently providers must
mail or fax clinical documentation to
support claims sent to Medicare Audit
Contractors and Recovery Audit Contractors.
During phase 1, review contractors
will continue to send medical documentation requests via paper mail and
providers will have the option to electronically send medical documentation
to the review contractor that requested
it. During phase 2, review contractors
will electronically send documentation requests to providers when their
claims are selected for review. CMS
plans to go live with phase 2 in 2012.
Seven health IT vendors are on tap to
support the program, including EHR-DOCTORS, HealthPort, Health IT Plus,
IVANS, MRO, NaviNet, and RISARC
Consulting.
Other vendors expected to join in
October include AKIRA, eSolutions
Electronic Commerce, BACTES, Secure Exchange Solutions, Cobius,
Greenway Medical Technologies, IOD,
Proficient Health, Craneware, AT&T,
and Medical Electronic Attachment.
Participating vendors will build and
use “esMD gateways” compatible with
the federally developed CONNECT
health information exchange software.
Providers participating in the pilot
program will be able to transmit original clinical documents as PDF or TIFF
image files and archive and track the
status of the request and response. In
a later phase, they’ll be able to transmit
structured clinical data.
More information on the program,
including a schedule of when contractors will start participating in the pilots,
is available at www.cms.gov/esMD. ¢
