The American Medical Association asks for a lot of Meaningful Use Stage 2 changes. As is customary, when HHS put out its proposed rule for EHR Meaningful Use Stage 2,  it invited comments. AMA posted theirs this week in a letter that runs to 37 pages and is co-signed by 100 affiliated associations, including state medical associations and professional practice groups. (AMA sent a shorter letter on this subject in March.)

The Department of Justice today announced another major fraud bust, with a total of 107 individiuals - including doctors, nurses and social workers - charged in seven cities around the country.

You could face harsher requirements, including prepayment review and minimizing exemptions, to verify meaningful use for CMS’ Electronic Health Records (EHR) system Incentive Programs.

CMS now essentially "takes providers' word" for following all meaningful use requirements and only does a cursory check before mailing the bonuses (PBN 8/9/11). 

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) is urging CMS to adopt stricter standards, such as pre- and post-payment reviews, to ensure providers are meeting the meaningful use reporting requirements for both the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the agency announced in an late-April report on the programs’ first year success. Medicaid programs in at least four states already use these methods, the report states.

An industry group finds denials of medical imaging orders have doubled in four years -- and many are bogus. While the study was done by a not-exactly-disinterested party -- the Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance (MITA) -- it does use data from the non-profit Patient Advocacy Foundation.

Salaries are down for some specialties more than others, of course. And some even went up. Medscape's annual physician compensation report is usually happy news. But this year's report, compiled from a survey of 24,216 physicians, indicates that "physician income declined in general."