Will the transition to ICD-10 ever actually happen? One group hopes not - at least not any time in the foreseeable future.

The Department of Health and Human Services has announced a plan to eliminate or streamline a series of regulations that apply to healthcare providers, including one that deals with requirements under the ePrescribing incentive program.

The comment period is about to close for a set of proposed regulations that would result in a one-year delay in the transition to ICD-10, and there appears to be little consensus on how federal regulators should handle the situation.

Following a string of short postponements, the Department of Health and Human Services has finally announced a plan to delay the implementation of ICD-10 for a full year, pushing the deadline for compliance back to October 1, 2014.

The majority of patients favor having immediate access to their test results through online patient portals, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

A fully networked healthcare system in which the majority of physicians use electronic health records could play an important role in the nation's ability to respond to natural disasters and disease outbreaks, according to a new report from the Institute of Medicine.

With deadlines for complying with meaningful use bearing down on physicians, many have made little progress toward preparing to transition to the ICD-10 code sets, according to a new survey conducted by the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange.

Donald Berwick, the former national coordinator for health IT, thinks there should be an intensified focus on limiting waste, rather than reducing the availability of care.

A new initiative from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will encourage physicians to enhance care coordination for seniors in long-term care facilities as part of an effort to reduce avoidable hospital admissions and lower costs.

For the second time, the government has announced that it will delay enforcement of the new HIPAA 5010 electronic transaction standards. Practices will now have until June 30, 2012 to become fully compliant.

Patient-centered care has come to dominate much of the discussion about how to improve quality while lowering costs.

After receiving pressure from a number of prominent professional organizations, the Department of Health and Human Services has announced it will delay the ICD-10 compliance date. The new deadline will be pushed back two years to October 1, 2013.

The acting head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has signalled that the agency may be willing to consider a further delay in deadline for complying with ICD-10 regulations, according to Modern Healthcare.

Many practices are currently feeling the pressure of meeting the requirements of HIPAA 5010. The new transaction sets are to be implemented at a time when physicians must also begin complying with the mandates of the meaningful use program.

States across the country are struggling to keep up with the rising cost of paying for Medicaid patients, but a new report suggests that enrolling these individuals into an integrated health system that uses technology like EHRs may help control costs.

The federal government is losing a major proponent of EHRs and other health IT tools, as the White House recently announced that the country's first chief technology officer Aneesh Chopra will step down from his position.

Today's healthcare system is complex and interconnected. Despite the intricacies of these connections, many practices are still using paper-based systems that developed during much simpler times.

Eliminating the delivery of unnecessary medical procedures is widely considered to be one of the keys to lowering healthcare costs. A new initiative from the American Board of Internal Medicine seeks to tackle the problem.

The nation is expected to face a major shortage of healthcare professionals in the coming years thanks in large part to an aging population.

One of the top concerns among medical practices is ensuring that they get paid for their services promptly. Navigating the maze of public and private payers can be tricky, but help may be on the way.

Public health programs will remain the largest costs for the U.S. government for the foreseeable future, but former Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services director Donald Berwick is saying that people should not blame Medicare and Medicaid for this.

A new bill introduced in the U.S. Senate could reduce the Food and Drug Administration's oversight authority of innovative new devices and help create more jobs in the growing healthcare field, according the congressmen who introduced the bill.

Greater use of disease registries could have a significant impact on lowering healthcare costs in the U.S., according to a new study published in the journal Health Affairs. This may become more feasible as more physicians begin to adopt electronic health records.

Electronic health records could soon plan an important role in advancing cancer care and research, possibly leading to fewer new cases of cancer and better survival rates for those who are diagnosed with the disease, according to a new report.

The Supreme Court of the United States recently decided to hear arguments challenging 2009's sweeping healthcare reform legislation. The court's decision could significantly alter the direction of a number of government initiatives involving EHR use and other health IT matters.