The shift from volume to value is bringing about numerous new job titles but three primary responsibilities, according to a session at the AMDIS 22nd Annual Physician-Computer Connection Symposium in Ojai, Calif.

CMIOs should be prepared for career flux, according to the speakers of a session at the AMDIS 22nd Annual Physician-Computer Connection Symposium in Ojai, Calif.

The clinical documentation required by ICD-10 will help present a more thorough clinical picture, according to members of a documentation panel held during the AMDIS 22nd Annual Physician-Computer Connection Symposium in Ojai, Calif., on June 27.

Blue Cross Blue Shield Association’s 37 member companies cover one in three Americans, giving senior VP and CFO Robert Kolodgy an excellent vantage point from which to view the economics of health care reform. In “Transforming the Payor Provider Relationship to Improve Value” at the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s annual national institute meeting in Orlando, Florida, Kolodgy put reform into financial context, enumerating the costs associated with the benefits of the nation’s health care law and describing some of the innovative partnerships BCBS has entered into with providers as part of a four-part plan to address health care’s well-known problems.

The press was full of stories earlier this month about the Pioneer ACOs that would exit the program. Are we surprised? If my employer told me I could play a game that, at the end of the year, would give me either a 10% bonus or a 10% penalty, I might be down with that—until I earned a penalty. What incentive would I have to put money at risk the next year? The only incentive I would have would be the lessons I learned in the process of trying to earn the bonus if—and this is a big if—I knew that the new game ultimately would become the only game. As these organizations exit the ACO program, I think they deserve a round of applause for giving the concept a whirl.

In the first of a series of Senate Finance Committee hearings planned on health IT, witnesses Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM, national coordinator for health IT and Patrick Conway, chief medical officer and director, Center for Clinical Standards and Quality and acting director, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, reported on progress of the Meaningful Use (MU) program and advised against temporarily halting it.

Despite the one-year delay in ICD-10 compliance, many healthcare providers still do not understand the value of the new medical diagnostic codes that will be used beginning Oct. 1, 2014, according to a new survey from eHealth Initiative. 

While study after study indicates that providers are ill prepared to convert to ICD-10 by the Oct. 1, 2014 deadline, the American Hospital Association (AHA) and the Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) Association told legislators they are on schedule for implementation and urged against any further delays.