The latest Medicare Trustees report is out and the news isn't good: Medicare is set to go bust in 2024, five years earlier than the 2029 date projected in last year's report. The Social Security program will run out of money earlier as well, in 2036 instead of 2037. Remember: The Medicare trust fund pays for Medicare Part A, which means hospital insurance is affected. Part B payments are funded entirely by tax revenue and premiums paid by beneficiaries themselves. Nevertheless, top physician advocacy groups leapt to the fore immediately after the report was released today.

CMS has designated June 15 as National Testing Day to ensure your practice will be HIPAA 5010 compliant come January 2012.

The decision came as a response to the Medical Group Management Association’s (MGMA) letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius from October 2010.

“Designating a national testing period in advance of the compliance date will focus the industry’s attention to prepare internal systems for the move to Version 5010 and begin testing electronic transactions with trading partners,” MGMA wrote in its letter.

Republican lawmakers are far from unified on a controversial House of Representatives bill masterminded by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) that would essentially replace the current Medicare program with a system of subsidies to seniors for buying private insurance in 2022. The latest sign of dissension comes in the form of a Republican budget proposal in the Senate, from Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), that would leave Medicare unscathed.

You would get a five-year vacation from the massive Medicare pay cuts called for by the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula -- if AMA President Cecil B. Wilson had his way. In his testimony before Congress, Wilson calls for a "three-pronged approach" to reforming Medicare's physician payment system. It starts with a permanent repeal of SGR, a five-year period of "stable payment updates that keep pace with the growth in medical practice costs" and a transition to new payment models.

CMS walked through electronic health record (EHR) attestation in a conference call Tuesday, easing some provider concerns.

CMS released the online EHR attestation system in late April and instructed providers step-by-step on how to use the system during the conference call.  There have been over 35,000 eligible attestations so far this year, CMS said. But the brevity of the instructional part of the call was offset by the volume of questions providers still had about the process. Here are some points CMS made clearer during the call: