August 17, 2015-The most misunderstood ICD-10 character

Provider Advisory Weekly Top Stories

1. An Epic way to obtain health records
2. Highmark’s head in area hopes for employment growth
3. Blue Cross may pull out of New Mexico exchange market
4. CareDox raises $1.2M for school-based mobile medical record offering
5. How a cloud can cover needs of Healthcare Industry?
6. Health IT helps hospitals win quality, Patient safety awards
7. Top Health IT Purchases of the Week
8. Meaningful use didn’t spark EHR uptake
9. The most misunderstood ICD-10 character
10. Execs tell interoperability task force to focus on use cases

Epic changes are happening at a local health system, making it easier for patients and health care providers to obtain health records. Epic is the name of a new E.M.R. system at NORTHSTAR Health System in Iron River. Hospitals across the country have begun to use E.M.R., or electronic medical records, including here in the U.P., because of a requirement in the Affordable Care Act. Project Manager, Jennifer Skarlupka–Reetz says, “So Epic is known for it’s customer satisfaction, and it’s a very responsive and fast… ABC 10 Up (8/13) Share: Forward | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIN

Highmark’s senior head in the region hopes the recently completed alliance between Blue Cross of Northeast Pennsylvania and the larger Pittsburgh-based health insurance company will help slow down health care cost increases and grow jobs in the area. Senior vice president Brian Rinker said the buildings at 19 and 70 N. Main St. in downtown Wilkes-Barre will remain key operations. He hopes the alliance will also help the company now occupy a vacant building it owns at 169 N. Pennsylvania Ave., which he said is… Citizensvoice (8/12) Share: Forward | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIN

Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Mexico may pull out of the individual insurance marketplace set up under the Affordable Health act next year if it can’t reach a deal on rate hikes with the state insurance commissioner. The Albuquerque Journal (http://bit.ly/1JkXePp) quotes Blue Cross of New Mexico President Kurt Shipley as saying his company needed an average 52 percent rate boost because it lost money last year because of unexpected high medical costs. Insurance Superintendent John Franchini rejected the… The Washington Times (8/16) Share: Forward | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIN

New York City-based mobile medical record systemCareDox (formerly MotherKnows) has raised $1.2 million, according to an SEC filing. This brings the company’s total funding to at least $6.1 million. Existing CareDox investors include First Round Capital, Charles River Ventures, Band of Angels, and Giza Ventures. The company raised its previous round in August 2014. Schools and parents can use CareDox’s online and mobile-enabled system to store students’ data. Academic institutions’ health providers will… Mobi Health News (8/12) Share: Forward | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIN

Whenever data breaches or breakdown of cloud system occur, concerning people assume that the cloud is an unsecured way of keeping bulk of data. Propensity of cloud system for breach does not let companies to rely on this system for hyper sensitive data. Fact is that, each cloud is developed with some specific purposes. There are cloud systems that are developed to handle important and sensitive information only. If you assume cloud cannot preserve sensitive data from breaches, the reality is far from your… Backup Technology (8/17) Share: Forward | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIN

Intelligent and efficient use of clinical analytics and other health IT tools has figured highly in a series of care quality and patient safety awards doled out this summer by organizations including Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey and the American Hospital Association (AHA). Five hospitals and health systems have been recognized with two separate awards in recent weeks, honoring their commitment to innovation, patient safety, and providing high quality patient care. In late July, the AHA announced the winners… Health IT Analytics (8/12) Share: Forward | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIN

Here are new contract signings for health information systems that providers or payers have announced in recent days: *Baptist Health South Florida with seven hospitals and nearly 50 clinics has bought Cerner’s Millennium electronic health record systems along with a suite of ancillary software. The package, being put in enterprisewide, includes inpatient/outpatient EHRs and pathology, laboratory, drugstore, surgical and OB/GYN systems, among others. *North Shore-LIJ Health System serving metro New York City will work… Health Data Management (8/14) Share: Forward | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIN

There will be government officials and health IT experts who refute these findings. Others, meanwhile, are likely to argue that it just confirms what they’ve been saying all along. Here goes: There is little or no actual hard evidence to prove that the Meaningful Use program triggered an uptake in electronic health records adoption. That’s according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. The authors of “Impact of the HITECH act on physicians’ adoption of electronic… Healthcare IT News (8/14) Share: Forward | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIN

When someone makes an ICD-10 spoof about subsequent encounters with a lamppost or turtle, they’re getting a basic part of ICD-10 coded wrong. That seventh character is about a patient’s encounter with doc. not how many similar injuries he or she has had: • A: Initial encounter • D: Subsequent encounter • S: Sequelae, treatment for condition that arises as a direct outcome of the acute illness or harm. And the ICD-10 key is invalid without it. If the encounter info doesn’t apply, then “X” needs to be added sothere are seven… Government Health IT (8/14) Share: Forward | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIN

On Aug. 14, an array of stakeholders told a Health IT Policy Committee task force that an overly broad approach focused on the concept of interoperability as a common good is less likely to succeed than one targeting specific use cases where financial incentives are aligned. Tim Pletcher, executive director of Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services, said that his organization has succeeded by concretely aligning projects with financial incentives. “For each use case, we identify the policy… Healthcare Informatics (8/15) Share: Forward | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIN

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