Practice Management News

The FDA recently issued final guidelines outlining its nonbinding recommendations for safe and secure interactions among medical devices and other information systems, calling for devices to be designed with interoperability as an objective.

A coalition of major physician groups submitted a testimony to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee emphasizing the importance of stabilizing health insurance markets to ensure that patients have access to a variety of affordable and comprehensive health insurance coverage options.

More Democrats than Republicans think the news media does a good job of covering science, according to the results of a new study.

The AMA recently sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Charles Schumer strongly opposing the Graham-Cassidy legislation, emphasizing that the bill would result in the loss of health insurance coverage for millions of Americans while destabilizing health insurance markets.

Evaluation and management coding patterns are under the microscope. CMS is monitoring evaluation and management code usage by specialty, state and nationally. The Recovery Audit Program of CMS aims to identify and correct improper Medicare payments through the detection and collection of overpayments. Commercial payers are using analytics to identify potentially inaccurate coding, too; take-backs may result.

Since the launch of Healio Gastroenterology in 2015, there was always coverage of important hepatology-related data, meetings and features. As you’ll notice, we are further recognizing the publication’s commitment to hepatology within our pages with a name change.

SAN FRANCISCO — At the American Society for Surgery of the Hand Annual Meeting, Andrew W. Gurman, MD, discussed physicians advocating for patients. He said it is physicians’ responsibility to advocate for both patients and their profession. Physicians can explain to Congress and the administration about the real-world impact of health care legislation.

The American College of Physicians recently sent two separate letters, one to Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy, MD, (R-La.) and the other to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Charles Schumer, conveying its strong opposition to the Graham-Cassidy proposal to ‘repeal and replace’ essential aspects of the Affordable Care Act, including Medicaid expansion and premium and cost-sharing subsidies.

The number of tweets that came out of the American Society of Breast Surgeons Annual Meeting between 2013 and 2016 increased by 600%, according to results published in the Annals of Surgical Oncology.

In a letter to CMS, the American College of Physicians offered several recommendations on its proposed rule for the 2018 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, focusing on further aligning various Medicare reporting programs and reducing administrative burdens for clinicians.