Moving further into 2014, doctors have a considerable number of challenges to deal with in managing their practices. From meeting the standards of Meaningful Use to optimizing their electronic health records software, there’s always a new hurdle to hop for healthcare providers.
According to FierceHealthIT, research shows that 17 percent of physicians cite adopting EHRs as their top IT concern. The Physicians Practice 2014 Technology Survey gathered responses from 1,442 participants. In addition to implementing EHRs into daily workflows, the providers claimed that the lack of interoperability from their reporting systems was a major concern, garnering 16 percent of their votes.
However, this survey isn’t the only report that indicated elevated levels of physician dissatisfaction with EHRs. Back in March 2014, a RAND Health report showed that, while providers thought the software was an effective concept, they felt the technology actually worsened their clinical performance, FierceEMR explained. This might be due to additional training or lack of collaboration with EHR vendors, and not the platform itself.
Besides the act of implementation, 13.3 percent of doctors also were worried about the amount of spending involved with adopting new software. Their willingness to increase expenses was impacted, as 40 percent claimed that they didn’t foresee any more money being funneled into EHRs in the next two years.
Shunning social media, telehealth
One of the most interesting aspects of the survey was the 62 percent of respondents who don’t use social media to communicate with patients about their practice. While many facilities utilize media interviews and news releases to reach out to the community, the Web allows for unfettered access to patients for the purpose of increasing engagement opportunities.
Telehealth also received little interest from physicians, as more than half replied that their practices weren’t considering adopting the technology. Similar to social media, this is an untapped resource that could improve the clinical performance of healthcare organizations, but providers are hesitant to change their methods of care delivery.
However, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently proposed expansions to telehealth that would provide reimbursements for rendered services. Yet CMS, which had remained noticeably quiet since the U.S. Congress approved a year-long delay to ICD-10, has finally broken its self-imposed silence.
Setting the date for ICD-10
Following the passing of the Protecting Access to Medicare Act, which led to the delay, the CMS has reiterated its intent for the compliance deadline to fall on Oct. 1, 2015. According to HealthDataManagement, the federal agency released new guidance on how to proceed with the new diagnostic code set, including dual coding and processing practices to bolster readiness.
“Dual coding and dual processing can be useful tools to prepare for ICD-10 by testing whether you’re able to prepare, send, receive and process transactions with ICD-10. However, ICD-10 can be used for testing purposes only before the compliance date; providers and payers can’t use ICD-10 in ‘live’ transactions for dates of service before the ICD-10 compliance date,” read the comments from CMS, quoted by the news source.
The final ruling would also require physicians to continue using the ICD-9 codes for any clinical services rendered through Sept. 30, 2015.
Although the implementation date was pushed back, it doesn’t mean that providers should let their ICD-10 readiness fall to the wayside. Now that CMS and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) expect the compliance deadline to remain as Oct. 1, 2015, practices need to ensure that they utilize the extra year efficiently and avoid any potential roadblocks to revenue cycle management.
