Anti-Injunction Act Bars Litigation of Affordable Care Act?

An amicus curiae or "friend of the court" brief focused on whether the Court may leave PPACA in effect even if it determines that requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty is unconstitutional.

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PPACA Supreme Court Hearings Coverage in Social Media Need Holistic View

If The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is repealed it will be interesting to see if it is repealed in whole or in part. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) may excise the individual mandate requiring health insurance coverage, or it could strike it down entirely.

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Stage 2 Meaningful Use, Interoperability of EMRs and ICD-10. What is CMS, ONC and HIPAA Impact on Accountable Care Organizations?

One of the key questions will be how the EMR provides a foundation with the Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) for comparative effectiveness data over the life span of a patient (sometimes called the continuum of care) and whether CDA standards currently proposed will accomplish that. Informatics people call this "longitudinal clinical data."

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ICD-10 Implementation Dealine: Repeal of Omabacare and Affordable Care Act is a Separate Issue

ICD-10 implementations must move forward despite Presidential campaign promises to repeal 'Omabacare' or the Affordable Care Act. As Business Week pointed out this week, repealing the Accountable Care Act is not that easy. And even if it were repealed ICD-10 is a HIPAA mandate that was enacted prior to President Omaba's election in August 2008. Hospital systems should push ahead on ICD-10 Assessments, ICD-10 Implementation Plans, and get ready for the shift to ICD-10-CM which includes many more diagnosis codes than ICD-9. ICD-10 PCS also include many more procedure codes than ICD-9.

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ICD-10 Readiness Compromised by ICD-10 Revenue Cycle, Analytics Vendors

We find that most analytics and revenue cycle companies are ignoring the future role coordinated medical coding will have, the transition to ICD-10, and the clinical documentation and processes on the revenue cycle. The ICD-10 transition will re-write the book on revenue cycle management (RCM). RAC audits and Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) will be subject to a new paradigm with ICD-10.

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ICD-10 Helps Accountable Care (ACO)

An Accountable Care Organization (ACO), is a physician-led entity – consisting of hospitals, primary care physicians, and specialists – responsible for managing the full continuum of care and accountable for the overall costs and quality of care for a defined population, that is partnered with their health plan. CMS mandates such as ICD-10 are separate from health care reform and were mandated before health care reform became law.

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ICD-10 Training Leaves Health Care Leaders “Shell Shocked”

Many health care leaders believe that their organizations have the move to the new medical coding standard ICD-10 under control. Then they attend a training session. "When we complete the training, many organizations are shell shocked," said an executive with a leading ICD-10 training firm. Most have completely under estimated the time, cost, and skills required to perform the ICD-10 conversion and implementation.

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Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) Will Not Save Costs

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) contains many beneficial provisions but that will not help solve the problem of rapidly rising costs any time soon.

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Health Care Reform is a Journey Not an Event

The recent passage of national health care reform legislation is an important milestone in the process of moving toward providing millions of Americans with access to health insurance. However, significant…

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