Peter Orszag likes the health care reforms that he had a hand in negotiating while serving as White House budget director. But he also has some regrets.

"... [I]t does almost nothing to reform medical malpractice laws," Orszag writes in The New York Times. "Lawmakers missed an important opportunity to shield from malpractice liability any doctors who followed evidence-based guidelines in treating their patients."

Physician practices would agree with Orszag, as malpractice reform has widespread support in the physician community. While debating the health care reform bill, even President Barack Obama said he was willing to add malpractice provisions to the reform bill. But the final bill only added state-level malpractice reform pilot projects.

Read more on malpractice reform

The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology (HIT) reports the Drummond Group and Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) have certified 46 electronic health record (EHR) products. Physician practices must use a certified EHR product to meet meaningful use standards under the EHR Incentive Program.

Click here for the list of certified EHR systems. 

Beware of emails from customers@eftps.gov stating your tax payments were rejected. It's a scam, the IRS warns.

The emails go to a website containing malware that will infect your computer. If you receive messages of this kind, the IRS instructs you to do the following:

1. Do not reply to the sender, access links on the site or submit any information to them.
2. Forward the message as-is immediately to us at phishing@irs.gov.
3. How to report and identify phishing, e-mail scams and bogus IRS websites.

Click here for more on email scam

New observation codes, changes to wound care codes and revisions to modifiers are just a few things we found in CPT 2011

Sage Healthcare's Tony Ryzinski passed along these 14 tips to successfully implement an electronic health record (EHR) system at your practice.

1. Keep your eye on good patient care. For example, scanning can't back up because providers need to trust that the electronic record has the information they need to make good medical decisions.
2. Listen to feedback-and use it. Don't scrap the project if you get negative feedback, but use your management skills to change the process. 
3. Evaluate your financial position. You can't go into a project like an EHR purchase and implementation without a financial plan. Make sure you understand your practice's tolerance for debt. Set up an internal payment schedule and determine your go-live date by how much time you'll need to prepare financially. For many practices, the financial plan will have a longer time horizon than the training plan.

Click here to read more about implementing an EHR