Recent headlines have raised plenty of eyebrows with record setting big-dollar penalties levied against healthcare organizations due to HIPAA violations. Industry experts surmise that this unprecedented trend is the result of significant changes that have occurred recently to HIPAA regulations.

The CMS EHR Incentive program (commonly known as Meaningful Use) is not just about getting all providers to use EHRs. It’s creating a foundation of detail clinical and administrative data – all expressed in the same standard vocabulary – that can be used to automate the calculation and reporting of patient outcomes. With the shift from volume to value in care delivery and reimbursement models, comprehensive quality measures are an essential element – else how can we determine value? But the historical approach to measuring quality using manually abstracted data will not work in a healthcare environment focused on value. Quality metrics must be automated. The industry must shift to eMeasures – metrics calculated and reported based on data captured in the EHR as a by-product of care delivery. This spring, CMS published the timeline for implementing a unified set of electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs) and e-reporting requirements intended to synchronize and integrate CMS quality programs and reduce provider reporting burden. Are you prepared to embark on the journey to the new generation of quality measures and reporting?

As healthcare reform continues its fast and uncertain path, healthcare organizations know no matter what, information is going to be key in providing insights into their business. It can help to identify trends in services and costs so changes can be made. Simply getting to the information can be a challenge on its own, but the key is accessing information, having the right tools to be able to unscramble the information to drive change improvements, and be the catalyst that will drive your organization to consider making a move today.

The emergence of predictive analytics is making it possible for health care organizations to get a more accurate picture of the future. This white paper offers examples of how the health care industry is applying advanced analytics to data. As a result, organizations can quickly and effectively implement programs that vastly improve care and reduce unnecessary readmissions. To find out more, download the full report.

The regulatory environment continues to become more stringent as HIPAA regulations require nearly every healthcare organization to maintain an easily accessible and complete archive of electronically stored information (ESI). Healthcare IT departments are pulled in many directions in order to stay aligned with federal requirements for access control, integrity, and transmission security for patient communications or implementing Electronic Medical Records (EMR) systems. Managing communication systems is an unnecessary burden that ultimately distracts IT teams from contributing towards the improvement of patient care. Today, healthcare providers can turn to hosted services to more easily meet the security and privacy requirements for electronic Protected Health Information laid out in the HIPAA Security Rule, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s HITECH requirements, and other federal regulations.