On Sept. 27, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the launch of HealthCare.gov on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Healthcare.gov. ''HealthCare.gov on Facebook offers Facebook users a new tool to understand and stay informed about the Affordable Care Act,'' said Sebelius. ''This new page is another resource that people ...

The Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) submitted comments this week to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in response to the request for information, ''HIPAA Privacy Rule Accounting of Disclosures Under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act; Request for ...

When the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) finally released the long-awaited proposed definition of meaningful use as it applies to electronic health records (EHRs), it opened up a 60-day public comment period. In the spirit of ''full'' disclosure, the government has posted some of these comments on a Web site. Here are just a few ...

What a week it's been for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Aside from celebrating the first anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), officials introduced several new comrades to the public. On Feb. 17, Joy Pritts was named chief privacy officer in the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health ...

Yes, readers of the HIM world, it was 1 year ago today that President Obama took that fateful pen to paper and signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), paving the way for electronic health records (EHRs) and all the perks and headaches associated with them. The push for EHRs is part of the Health Information Technology for ...

An emergency department (ED) in a facility in Western Sydney, Australia, banned the use of its EHR, going back to paper and pen, after struggling with downtime on the system. While a North South Wales (NSW) opposition health spokeswoman claimed that government is ''putting lives at risk'' with the system, the NSW government denied the claim, with ...

The American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC) scored a victory yesterday when it was announced that ICD-10 implementation would be pushed back from 2011 to 2013. AAPC took an opposing view to that of the American Health Information Management Association, which advocated for an implementation sooner rather than later. AAPC made efforts to ...

The eagerly awaited Final Rules for adoption of ICD-10 will be published in the next few days, and the implementation date has been bumped from 2011 to 2013. The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) released a brief statement today applauding the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on approving the Final Rules for ...