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A 43-page draft proposal outlining the details of the Pioneer model for accountable care organizations (ACO) was obtained and released Friday by The Hill, a Washington-based political paper. Remember: CMS delegated its Innovation Center, a health reform creation set to create and experiment with new payment models to reduce program costs,  to devise three classes of ACOs:  the Pioneer ACO model, Advance Payment ACO Initiative, and Accelerated Development Learning Sessions.

While the vast majority of physicians know about the incentive bonuses they can earn by implementing an electronic health record (EHR) and meeting meaningful use, barely a third know that failing to do so by 2015 will result in a Medicare payment penalty. This significant discrepancy in knowledge was uncovered in a survey of 500 physicians by Physicians' Reciprocal Insurers (PRI).

It’s easy to think today’s gadgets such as the Droid phones, iPads and Blackberry smartphones are strictly for the younger, up and coming doctors. But a new study by QuantiaMD shows that more experienced physicians use these technologies more than their still-wet-behind-the-ears colleagues.

You already know that Jan. 1, 2012 is the deadline to implement the new ANSI 5010 standard for electronic transactions of HIPAA-protected data. But you might be wondering why CMS recently announced a delay in the “implementation of the PWK (paperwork) segment associated with [the test of the 5010] claim transaction originally scheduled for July and October 2011.”