ORLANDO—Hillary Rodham Clinton thanked audience members for their work in health IT during her keynote address at the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) annual conference.

Efforts to remove a pre-admission requirement designed to shorten Medicare patient stays at more expensive critical access hospitals (CAHs) got a boost as a bi-partisan companion bill was introduced to advance a legislative fix in the Senate alongside efforts in the House.

The halls are buzzing, educational sessions are lively and feet and backs are aching. Just another day at HIMSS14!

ORLANDO—The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT held a Town Hall meeting at the Health Information and Management Systems Society’s annual conference during which members of the office’s leadership team shared how they are working to advance the national health IT agenda.

ORLANDO—Will there be another delay in ICD-10 implementation? “That is not an option that is being considered,” said Matthew Albright, director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' Office of E-Health Standards and Services, speaking to Clinical Innovation + Technology at the Health Information and Management Systems Society’s annual conference.

To make the government’s electronic health record standard setting process more transparent, the Office of the Nation Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) announced that it will begin issuing “voluntary” certification criteria on a more regular basis than it has in the past.

Concerned that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) plans for front-end testing of the ICD-10 system during the week of March 3 is too brief and too limited in scope, U.S. Senators and physicians Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-Okla.), John Barrasso, M.D. (R-Wyo.), John Boozman, O.D. (R-Ark.), and Rand Paul, M.D. (R-Ky.) have requested that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) answer their questions about the testing by February 26.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service has responded to calls for more thorough ICD-10 testing, announcing that it will conduct end-to-end testing to a small sample group of providers this summer.