The launch of TEFCA by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is a huge step toward updating the flow of electronic health information in the US.  So, What Is TEFCA? TEFCA is an abbreviation for the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common...Read More

Texting can raise concerns with privacy, confidentiality, and security. That’s why as recently as 2018, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) had a clear stance on texting patient information: avoid it. But in February 2024, CMS made a clarification to HIPAA compliance rules; and their new guidelines affect anyone who needs to remain...Read More

The OCR’s revised rule on online tracking tools has again been met with pushback from entities. Here’s what you need to know about this saga. Since 2022, a debate has raged over the use of online tracking tools by HIPAA-covered entities and business associates. On one side is the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR),...Read More

How can interoperability help reduce something as specific as a patient fall? Read on to learn the latest insights from the HIMSS24 conference.  The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference 2024 was held this March in Orlando. The event saw professionals from around the globe come together to realize a new era of...Read More

The Interoperability and Prior Authorization Final Rule has wide-ranging implications for payers, providers, and patients. Read on to learn more about its highly-anticipated provisions. As part of its push to encourage interoperability and make health information more readily available across entities, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued its Interoperability and Prior Authorization...Read More

Just like fingerprints, everyone has a unique tongue print. Has a certain scent in the air ever reminded you of a memory or occasion, or sometimes even a person? Your nose can remember 50,000 scents! Your brain often associates those scents with events and people. Feeling foggy in the afternoon? Be sure and stay hydrated....Read More

Although available, telehealth didn’t become commonplace until the throes of the pandemic. Technology, availability, payment codes, and other solutions were rapidly implemented. Now that the PHE is officially over, where does that leave HIPAA compliant telehealth? Telehealth reduced infection risk, expanded critical access to care for all types of communities, and addressed capacity challenges. The...Read More

Value-based care is a health care delivery model that pays providers based on the health outcomes of their patients and the quality of services rendered, rather than the number of services they provide. Value-based care (VBC) struts onto the healthcare scene as a trendsetter, determined to revolutionize the way we approach patient well-being, chronic diseases,...Read More

While healthcare has been evolving for centuries, there has been no accelerator quite as fast as the addition of health technology. Let’s take a little journey through time to review history – and maybe even peer into the future a bit. Medical discoveries such as the stethoscope, autoclave, human genome project, and vaccines have had...Read More

Healthcare providers should be keeping their eyes on a new piece of bipartisan legislation seeking to offer workers stand-alone telehealth benefits – much in the same way that vision and dental plans are offered. We all remember how quickly telehealth became mainstream as the pandemic ramped up in 2020 – spurred on by both need...Read More