CMS keeps changing the PECOS deadline. Will your July claims be denied or not? Uncertainty is frustrating. Home care agencies and their referring physicians just want CMS to get the online application system working and make up their mind about when they will enforce it. One by one, we are hearing about software vendors coming to the rescue. This story about one of them, ContinuLink, includes a comprehensive history of PECOS’s fluid deadlines.
– Allscripts to help Central Virginia system share patient data with hospital, physicians and home care
– ATA calls for presentation proposals for 2011 meeting
Though the deadline has been pushed back a few months, RHHIs will soon deny payment for home health care claims if the physician authorizing Medicare services was not registered in the Medicare Provider Enrollment, Chain and Ownership System ( PECOS) or opted out of Medicare by the date services began. Wouldn’t it be handy if your referral intake software included a direct link to the PECOS database? We have found two such services so far.
— CellTrak Mobile Technology improves client care in Vancouver
— Medline Industries, Inc. and Strategic Healthcare Programs partner to support improved home health outcomes with new reporting and benchmarking system to help providers select optimum wound care treatment.
— Braff Group expands into behavioral health and social services
Moving rapidly into the home health care market after its successful start in CHF disease management, Cardiocom made three significant announcements in recent weeks. This article provides brief summaries of the Minneapolis company’s new interfaces with Thornberry’s NDoc and ContinuLink’s home health application and its internally developed and manufactured, fully integrated pulse oximeter. As per our VW custom, we also provide links to each company’s web site.
If there were awards for best new company name, the Center for Connected Health, a division of Partners HealthCare in Boston, would win for 2010. “Healthrageous” has just completed a significant round of financing and will soon bring to market “personalized, interactive, motivational self-management tools to help individuals shed unhealthy habits, improve their adherence to medical advice and embrace healthy lifestyles.”
New terms always make interesting news. At the ATA meeting last month we learned about “Proactive Passive Monitoring.” These are systems that deploy unobtrusive “person sensitive” sensors, strategically placed in the living space, to monitor motion, impact, bed, door and threshold, motion/temperature and motion/humidity, delivering readings to a central observer. Staff writer Sylvia Talkington’s interview with one of the developer’s of the concept had a lot to say last month about how well we anticipate the needs of elderly persons living alone.
ZOE® fluid monitoring technology can detect a CHF exacerbation a full two weeks prior to the onset of weight gain. Now, thanks to an arrangement with Philips, more patients will have access to ZOE® monitors and Philips’ home health care agency customers will benefit from a smooth data flow from one to the other.
— Philips creates reference design for ZigBee Health Care standard
— PHT Corporation and Entra Health Form Strategic Partnership to Provide Integrated Clinical Trials Technology for Diabetes
— CellTrak to implement for Canadian provider
One of the largest technology companies with a home health and hospice software division has announced it will merge with one of the largest hospital software vendors in a $1.3 billion, all-stock transaction. With a combined client base that will total 1,500 hospitals, 10,000 post-acute organizations and 180,000 physicians, the new company will begin to focus on developing a single, common patient record system.
