There will be no delay for ICD-10

While some may still be holding out hope for a delay to ICD-10, Marilyn Tavenner, head of CMS, quashed some of those hopes this week at HIMSS14. “There are no more delays and the system will go live on Oct. 1,” Tavenner said during her keynote address on Thursday. She also made the statement that there will be no delay to compliance dates for Meaningful Use / MIPS Stage 2. She acknowledged that providers and vendors have serious challenges ahead of them and that the CMS is willing to accept applications for “hardship exemptions.”

For more details on Tavenner’s keynote, read the full Modern Healthcare article here. 

Changes to ONC EHR certification revealed at HIMSS14

On Friday of last week, the ONC released a notice of proposed rule making and made a presentation on the details of the new rule on Tuesday at HIMSS14. EHR Intelligence published an article with coverage from the presentation.

The item being addressed is the 2015 EHR Certification Criteria. This is the first effort towards the certification of EHR systems and services. Our own Tom Grove, published an article discussing what these certification efforts mean for providers. For a summary  of the 250-page rule, read Tom’s latest post.

Hillary Rodham Clinton champions health IT at HIMSS14

Former Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, discussed the importance of health IT to an audience of thousands on Wednesday night at the HIMSS14 conference. In her speech, Clinton advocated for electronic health records, referencing events like hurricane Katrina and the impact EHRs could have had in that situation. In coverage on Healthcare IT News, Clinton is quoted stating, “It’s time to embrace evidence, not political ideologies that hamper the healthcare industry’s potential.”