It probably seemed like an April Fools joke to many in healthcare, but this week another ICD-10 delay means the transition won’t happen until at least Oct. 1, 2015.

The fiscal year 2015 budget the House Budget Committee marks up today would cut about $2.9 trillion in health care spending over 10 years and turn Medicare into a premium support program.

Tuesday, President Obama signed H.R. 4302 into law. It is the 17th temporary sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula fix passed by Congress, but the first such fix actually opposed by the American Medical Association (AMA), which had spent millions to try to win a permanent repeal.

The Board of the non-profit community-owned Community Medical Center in Missoula, Mont., has approved a joint venture with the Billings Clinic and RegionalCare Hospital Partners that would, among other objectives, switch it to a for-profit entity.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services want value out of what they are purchasing, and thus increasingly will expect states to share more data on the care delivery of the 65 million Medicaid beneficiaries nationwide, said Jessica Kahn, MPH, director of the Division of State Systems at CMS at the State Healthcare IT Connect Summit on April 1.

Just a few weeks ago, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Marilynn Tavenner’s resounding message at the Health Information and Management Systems Society annual conference in Orlando was that more ICD-10 delays were not going to happen. 

Without mentioning critics by name, the annual report to Congress on the Medicare Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program released this week makes a point of showing measures of its accuracy and its steps to reduce the burden on healthcare providers.

On Monday, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to take up the temporary sustainable growth rate formula (SGR) fix and one-year ICD-10 delay that was pushed through the House in dramatic fashion on Thursday.