You've heard it before -- you can improve your patients' health outcomes and waste fewer Medicare dollars by avoiding useless procedures and tests. Now a physician group has published a top-five list of don'ts for primary care doctors to avoid. Highlights include cautions against imaging scans for back pain within the first six weeks unless "red flags" are present and support for prescribing generic statins for lipid-lowering drug therapy. These are two of the five items listed by the non-profit National Physicians Alliance (NPA), which actually released three separate "top five" lists for internists, family practitioners and pediatricians.

Independent diagnostic testing facilities are on the hook for the $505 enrollment fee that also affects durable medical equipment (DME) suppliers, according to the CMS transmittal. The fee was announced March 23 in Transmittal 371 to the Medicare Program Integrity Manual. According to the health care reform bill, the fee will be used to cover the cost of the program and to screen enrollment applications to curb fraud.

You and your peers may be able avoid the 1% e-Prescribing (e-Rx) Medicare payment penalty if you qualify for one of CMS’s new proposed hardship exemptions outlined in its May 26 proposed rule. If finalized, the wil give providers a more flexible timeline and more options to claim a hardship exemption for not being able to meet the e-Rx requirement by June 30. 

Patient data stored in existing electronic health record (EHR) systems isn't very secure, according to new reports from the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG). In an audit of seven different hospitals, the OIG uncovered 151 "vulnerabilities," of which 124 were determined to be "high impact." That term means the vulnerabilities could result in costly losses of tangible assets, may significantly harm an organization's reputation, and may even cause injury or death to patients.

CMS released a new batch of FAQs Friday regarding Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs, which could aid your eager pursuit of attesting meaningful use. Some of CMS's responses include clarification on what "exchange of electronic information" means in the “capability to exchange key clinical information” objective, how to count patients in “swing beds” and in nursery day care as part of the meaningful use denominator and more.