News from the AOA's Blog

The federal Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) announced that health care providers and public health agencies in Minnesota and Rhode Island last month began exchanging health information electronically using specifications developed under the agency’s Direct Project.

The Direct Project represents an important early stage effort to facilitate the secure transfer of electronic health record (EHR) data as envisioned under the federal government’s Health Information Technology for Economics and Clinical Health (HITECH) initiative, according to the ONC.

Other Direct Project pilot programs will be launched soon in New York, Connecticut, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma and California to demonstrate the effectiveness of the project’s “streamlined” approach to information exchange for core elements of patient care and public health reporting, according to a Feb. 2 ONC announcement. Read the rest of this entry ?

Four-fifths of the nation’s hospitals, and 41 percent of office-based physicians, intend to take advantage of federal incentive payments for adoption and meaningful use of certified electronic health records (EHR) technology, according to survey data released last month by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC).

The survey information was released as the registration period opened for the government’s Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs (see AOA News, January).

Some four-fifths of the office-based physicians who plan take part in the incentive program – about a third of all office-based physicians (32.4 percent) – plan to enroll during the first two years of the EHR initiative (termed Stage 1 by the ONC). Read the rest of this entry ?

The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has introduced a new universal Medicare Durable Medical Equipment (DME) Reopening Request Form for all suppliers of durable medical equipments prosthetics, orthotics and supplies (DMEPOS) to use when submitting a reopening request either by mail or fax.

The new form is designed so that suppliers can easily include all of the basic information needed to submit a reopening request in any of Medicare’s four DME Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC) Jurisdictions (Jurisdiction A—NHIC, Corp.; Jurisdiction B—National Government Services; Jurisdiction C—CIGNA Government Services; Jurisdiction D—Noridian Administrative Services). Read the rest of this entry ?

Cost-cutting” and “technological innovation” have both emerged as key concepts in health care. However, a growing controversy over the assignment of new billing codes for laser retinal scanning illustrates how two important movements to improve the nation’s health care system can ironically clash—to the detriment of patients—when health policymakers aren’t careful, according to the AOA Advocacy Group.

With laser retinal scanning widely regarded to be among the most important new diagnostic eye care techniques to emerge over recent years, the AOA and other eye care practitioner organizations are fighting recent decisions that will effectively slow the growth of diagnostic imaging, a goal of Congress and the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Read the rest of this entry ?

With a stroke of Gov. Steve Beshear’s pen late yesterday, the Commonwealth of Kentucky took an historic step forward in providing optometric patients with assured access to the quality eye health care that they need and deserve.  

The landmark Better Access to Quality Eye Care Act (S.B. 110) was approved by large bi-partisan majorities in both chambers of the Kentucky legislature last week and, with the governor’s signature, is now law. The Kentucky legislation authorizes:

• The Kentucky Board of Optometric Examiners to have the sole authority to determine what constitutes the practice of optometry
• The treatment, including laser and non-laser surgical procedures, of diseases, disorders, or conditions of the eye and its appendages within the scope of a licensee’s education and training as approved by the board of optometry 
  • As outlined in the law, there are certain procedures that are specifically excluded from the scope of practice (for example, Retina laser procedures, LASIK, and PRK and others)
• All relevant drugs need to treat those conditions via any route of administration with the exclusion of Schedule I and II controlled narcotic substances
• Optometrists will be permitted, in a public health emergency, to administer vaccinations or immunizations for systemic health reasons (Kentucky is the first state in the nation to permit optometrists to do this).

Read the rest of this entry ?