Articles and Blogs

This week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) announced its intent to reopen the submission period for hardship exception applications for eligible professionals and hospitals participating in the Medicare Meaningful Use Program in order to avoid the 2015 Medicare payment adjustments for not demonstrating meaningful use of Certified Electronic Health Record Technology (“CEHRT”).... READ MORE

On Tuesday, August 5, the Federal Communications Commission proposed changing how it defines high-speed Internet to download speeds of 10 megabits per second (Mbps) for a service to qualify as broadband. The FCC currently defines broadband Internet as 4 Mbps download speed. The FCC is seeking public comment on whether those bandwidth thresholds should be... READ MORE

Hospitals, health systems and other large users of Microsoft, Adobe and similar software are experiencing increased license auditing.  Because of the dynamic nature of the IT environment, most users operate in varying degrees of compliance with their license agreements.  In the event of an audit, the cost of compliance, known or unknown, can be... READ MORE

OCR Chief Regional Counsel for Region V, Jerome Meites, has warned that enforcement activity over the past year will “pale in comparison” to the next 12 months. While Mr. Meites was not specific as to this pronouncement being limited to Region V, it may be important to note that Region V covers Illinois, Indiana,... READ MORE

Following recent news about the Heartbleed exploit, CloudFlare, a San Francisco-based security services company, challenged hackers to use Heartbleed to get private encryption keys that would unlock secure data. It reported multiple winners to its challenge. By obtaining the private key for an SSL/TLS certificate, an attacker could set up a fake website that passes... READ MORE

Three federal regulators have released a long-awaited report proposing the framework for regulation of health information technology (“Health IT”).  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”), the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (“ONC”) and the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) are accepting comments on their proposed risk-based regulatory framework until July... READ MORE

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”), the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (“ONC”) and the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) are accepting comments on their recently issued final FDASIA Health IT Report, entitled Proposed Strategy and Recommendations for a Risk-Based Framework. The agencies are seeking public comment on the questions... READ MORE

 On April 3, 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”), the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (“ONC”) and the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) released their long-awaited final report on health information technology (“Health IT”), entitled Proposed Strategy and Recommendations for a Risk-Based Framework. According to the report, the degree... READ MORE

Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator of CMS, indicated that providers, payers and claims clearinghouses can look for no relief from the looming October 1 compliance deadline for the nationwide conversion to the ICD-10 family of diagnostic and procedural codes. She made this statement in her February 27, 2014 address to the HIMSS convention in Orlando... READ MORE

The Meaningful Use Workgroup provided its recommendations on Meaningful Use Stage 3 to the Health IT Policy Committee on February 4.  Stage 3 would focus on improving outcomes.  Further discussion of the recommendations will be held on February 14.  The proposed timeline sets proposed rulemaking for fall 2014 and final rulemaking for the first half of 2015. ... READ MORE