Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced $100 million in federal grant funds to 10 states to improve health care quality and delivery systems for children enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

The grants, which will be awarded over a five year period, were funded by the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 (CHIPRA). The money will help states implement and evaluate provider performance measures and utilize health information technologies such as pediatric electronic health records and other quality improvement initiatives. Read the full story at HHS.gov.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced $100 million in federal grant funds to 10 states to improve health care quality and delivery systems for children enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

The grants, which will be awarded over a five year period, were funded by the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 (CHIPRA). The money will help states implement and evaluate provider performance measures and utilize health information technologies such as pediatric electronic health records and other quality improvement initiatives. Read the full story at HHS.gov.

Date: February 25, 2010
Presenters: Scott Shalett, Principal, Dewey Square Group; Peter Preziosi, PhD, CAE, CEO, AHDI/MTIA
Time: 12 PM PST / 1 PM MST / 2 PM CST / 3 PM EST
Duration: 1 Hour
Registration Close: February 23, 2010
Cost: Free
CE Given: 1 TW

With great anticipation, the Centers for Medicare & Medicare Services recently released proposed regulations on “meaningful use” and EHR certification. Physicians and healthcare enterprises would have to meet these regulations to qualify for billions of dollars in federal financial incentives for EHR adoption. The federal government’s efforts to spur EHR adoption have broad and sweeping consequences for medical transcription service owners and healthcare documentation professionals. During this webinar, Scott Shalett of the Dewey Square Group, the lobbying firm AHDI and MTIA have been working with since last June, and AHDI/MTIA CEO Peter Preziosi, PhD, CAE, will provide an overview of the consequences, what efforts are being made to position the medical transcription sector for success in the rapidly changing health IT landscape, and what you can do to support those efforts leading up to the 5th annual AHDI/MTIA Advocacy Summit from March 23 to 25 in Washington, DC.

Scott Shalett is a principal at the Dewey Square Group, the lobbying firm AHDI and MTIA have been working with since June of last year. Peter Preziosi is the CEO of AHDI and MTIA.

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Health IT advocates and stakeholders from the health care industry have pledged to lobby to reinstate into a Senate jobs bill an amendment that would have made hospital-based physicians who provide outpatient care eligible to receive incentive payments for electronic health record usage under the HITECH Act, Modern Healthcare reports. The EHR incentive payments were included in the federal economic stimulus package last year. Read the full iHealthBeat story.

AHDI’s Board of Directors, Component Leaders, and House of Delegates are spearheading a new initiative to ensure the long-term success, relevance, and business sustainability of our association’s components. This project, called “The Blueprint for Great Governance,” is being lead by AHDI President-elect Barb Marques, CMT, AHDI-F, and Speaker of the House Bonnie Monico, CMT, AHDI-F, with an esteemed group of team members representing the diversity of our membership.

Over the next six months, the team will host a series of Town Hall meetings both in person and online to brainstorm new approaches, services, and models to best serve the needs of our members and position MTs for long-term success in this rapidly changing environment of health care. We will examine the 1) purpose of components, 2) tactics for collaboration and sharing of best practices, 3) ways to ensure financial stability, and 4) engagement models.

All AHDI members, component leaders and members, and delegates are invited to participate in the Town Hall meetings. The online Town Hall meetings will be announced in Vitals as they are scheduled; and face-to-face meetings will be held as follows:

• March 25, 2010 (in conjunction with the Advocacy Summit)
  2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
  Marriott Crystal City; Arlington, Virginia
• April 16, 2010 (in conjunction with the AHDI-West Conference & Advocacy Day)
  9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
  Hilton Garden Inn–Phoenix Airport North, Phoenix, Arizona

Following the Town Hall meetings, there will be a Leadership Summit held at ACE on Wednesday, August 4, 2010, for our Component Presidents, House of Delegates, and national AHDI Board of Directors. Please mark your calendars. Our goal for the Summit will be to reach final consensus on a blueprint for the future and specific paths forward in the four areas outlined above.

If you have questions or would like more information on this important initiative, please contact Linda G. Brady, CAE, director of member relations by email: lbrady@ahdionline.org.

Last year President Obama used his budget to lay the groundwork for comprehensive health-care reform, proposing a 10-year, $634 billion reserve fund as a “down payment” on universal coverage.

This year’s blueprint does not include that money, though administration sources said the overall federal budget assumes a bill will be enacted and result in deficit reduction of $150 billion over the next decade.

The budget for the Department of Health and Human Services envisions a few minor changes: a $1 billion increase for the National Institutes of Health, $1.6 billion more for child care and an additional $290 million for community health centers. Read more at the Washington Post.

With the rapid evolution of emerging technologies reshaping how healthcare documentation is captured, secured, and repurposed, the need for transitional resources and practical guidelines that assist practitioners in preparing for and managing those changes has become important to both healthcare documentation professionals and the client providers for whom our industry provides its services. To that end, AHDI has developed several tool kit resources that address these evolving trends and the guidelines necessary to be “technology ready” in this sector. We encourage you to visit our AHDI Tool Kits section of the website to view all three tool kits available at your convenience. Check out these important resources below:

Dictation Best Practices (DBP)—Designed to help providers to improve dictation practices that impact “SRT readiness” and ongoing quality data capture. (Tool kit under revision; update coming soon.)

Personal Health Record Facilitator (PHR)—Designed to help MTs to transition to contributory roles assisting the general public with PHR creation and maintenance.

Electronic Health Record (EHR) —Designed to help MTs understand and prepare for emerging roles in the EHR.

The Cooperative Exchange said that the National Health Information Network (NHIN) superhighway currently exists through the inter- and intra-connectivity of its member organizations, and electronic health records (EHR) can currently be transferred between providers securely and efficiently.

The “gateways” or clearinghouses enable providers and other trading partners to establish connections with payers. The Cooperative Exchange has developed a collaborative environment among organizations that transmit a percentage of the health care electronic transactions through its member organization. Each year, claims clearinghouses and other electronic data interchange vendors electronically transmit billions of claims and related financial/administrative transactions among providers and payers. Read the full story at advanceweb.com.

Does the medical-school curriculum adequately prepare students to diagnose and treat patients using an electronic health record? That’s the question educators at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine set out to answer this year. The preliminary conclusion: probably not. As a result, the school may add course work to teach students how to incorporate the EHR into an encounter with a patient. Read more at ModernHealthcare.com.

In this presentation, Dr. Wang will talk about:

- Latest in bladeless LASIK, for nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism;
- The new FDA clinical trial to treat age-related loss of near vision (presbyopia). Wang Vision Institute is only one of three centers selected by US FDA to conduct a research and clinical trial, for a new breakthrough technology to treat presbyopia.
- The new Forever Young Lens cataract surgery, to enable patients to have a full range of vision for both distance and near.
- Novel sight restoration surgeries to restore sight in the blind.

Dr. Ming Wang, MD, PhD, Harvard & MIT graduate (MD, magna cum laude) and one of the few cataract and LASIK eye surgeons in the world today who holds a doctorate degree in laser physics, will present a web presentation, in which he will describe the new technologies in laser vision, new FDA clinical trial to reverse aging, Forever Young Lens cataract surgery and sight restoration surgeries for the blind.

Presenter: Ming Wang, MD, PhD
Time: 11:00 AM PST / 2:00 PM EST
Duration: 1.5 Hours
Registration Close: January 26, 2010
Cost: $20 Members / $30 Non-members
CEC Given: 1 CM

Click here for Dr. Wang’s full bio.

Click here to register!