Editor's Note A study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that some electronic health record (EHR) vendors consistently outperform others, the November 27 Becker’s Hospital Review reports. Epic had the highest performance on five of six meaningful use (MU) stage 2 criteria, including view, download, and…

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Editor's Note Despite the expansion of requirements for electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM) reporting to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, an increased number of Joint Commission accredited hospitals are adopting and reporting eCQMs to drive quality improvement, the Joint Commission reports.  In 2016, 470 accredited hospitals submitted eCQM…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program has had the unintended consequence of increased short- and long-term mortality in heart failure patients, this study finds. Five years ago, as part of the Affordable Care Act, federal policy makers introduced the Hospital Readmission Reduction…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on November 1 announced it will update the hospital outpatient prospective payment system rates by 1.35%. The final rule also removes total knee arthroplasty from the inpatient only list along with five other procedures and adds one procedure to the…

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Editor's Note For the third year in a row, researchers with the Lewin Group couldn’t determine whether Medicare’s voluntary Bundled Payment for Care Improvement initiative cuts costs and improves care, the October 31 Modern Healthcare reports. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) funded analysis found that although providers…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued new guidance designed to offer clarity on the Merit-based Incentive Payment System’s (MIPS) data blocking component, the October 30 Healthcare Informatics reports. The guidance outlines how MIPS-eligible clinicians can show they are fulfilling the information blocking requirement, which…

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Editor's Note Changing to a hospital-wide measure of readmissions for the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) would result in only 76 more hospitals being eligible to receive penalties, but it would substantially increase the penalties for safety-net hospitals, this study finds. For the analysis, researchers used Medicare claims from 2011…

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Editor's Note A survey of 980 physicians in eight specialties by New York City-based Bain and Company found that 73% prefer fee-for-service rather than value-based care models because of concerns about the complexity and quality of care associated with value-based models, the October 12 Healthcare Informatics reports. More than 60%…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is moving submission of 2017 meaningful use (MU) data from the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program Registration and Attestation System to the QualityNet Secure Portal (QNet), effective January 2, 2018, the October 4 EHR Intelligence reports. QNet is currently…

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Editor's Note All-cause readmission is the only metric in widespread use, but it overlooks important information that enables readmission risk to be understood, this study finds. Of 514,455 patients in the UK analyzed over a 10-year period, there were 30,489 all-cause readmissions, 16,499 readmissions related to the surgical site, and…

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