Capitalizing on an ever-strengthening trend of growth in the healthcare industry nationwide, with new healthcare jobs projected to hit close to 536,000 by 2020, the New York State Department of Health, the New York eHealth Collaborative, and the New York City Investment Fund have kicked off a $4.2-million program to spur health IT innovation, create…

Whether or not President Obama’s embattled healthcare reform law clears the Supreme Court, no doubt the healthcare industry is booming as it should. And it will continue to do so, according to a new report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and Workforce, till past year 2020, 5.6 million new healthcare jobs later. The demand…

Of the 155,000 jobs added to the economy in April 2012, 19,000 were created by the booming healthcare industry, reported the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The health of the healthcare sector was confirmed by the Center for Health Workforce Studies at the University of Albany, State University in New York, which projected that more…

This year 2012 has pitched a curved ball as far as employment projections go—surprisingly, it has gone against doctors, but not against most everyone else in the healthcare industry. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released in February its employment projections for the next eight years, reporting that four industries will experience rapid job growths…

If the economic downturn had depressed careers in real estate and construction, it had quite the opposite effect on the allied healthcare occupations, including pharmacy technician jobs. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, pharmacy technician jobs are riding a wave and the bureau predicts that the sector will see an…

The healthcare industry was one of the few industries that escaped the deadweight of the recent economic slump, posting positive growth rates when many other sectors—notably housing, construction, and real estate—languished in the red. Thanks to a burgeoning senior population in need of healthcare services and the entry into the workforce of baby boomers who…

Despite the one-year deferment of the ICD-10 implementation to October 1, 2014, the new code set is for all intents and purposes the quasi-reality now in the medical sector as well as in the medical coding community.  Some myths, however, are associated with ICD-10 codes that might derail some users and even providers of medical…

DST Health Solutions announced recently the release of its PowerSTEPP, PowerMHC, PowerMHS, and AMISYS Advance core administration platforms—all designed to support ICD-10 compliance, including both ICD-9 and ICD-10 processing, the new focus and controversial area of concern for providers of medical billing and coding training courses. “Our team has really gone the extra mile to…

This has been proposed before. Now, a twist has been added: there’s talk of using the Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT) in place of or in conjunction with ICD-10, the new diagnostic coding set that has brought much controversy into the medical community because of its complexity. The American College of Physicians (ACP) has…

Amid the controversy concerning the implementation of ICD-10, Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy reported that using the new diagnostic coding set it was able to uncover a risk for seniors hitherto unrecognized by clinicians: a 42-percent increase in “falls as a cause of death” among seniors 65 and older between 1999 and…

The Texas Medical Association has joined the American Medical Association (AMA) in calling on the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for an alternative to ICD-10—or for its scrapping altogether. Its contention is based on its central fear that the new diagnostic code set “will introduce great cost … without…

Nope, make it a two-year delay “at a minimum”—so urged the American Medical Association (AMA) the federal government on its plan to move the compliance date of ICD-10 by one year, to Oct. 1, 2013. The urging came hot on the heels of the statement of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) in…

The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) is urging the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) — which proposed a one-year delay in the implementation of the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10) — to avoid further delaying the ICD-10 compliance because of…

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) in a letter sent to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) secretary Kathleen Sebelius reiterated its support of HHS’s proposed one-year delay of the ICD-10 compliance date, calling it an appropriate “middle ground” for all stakeholders. (ICD-10 stands for the International Classification of Diseases,…

The transition to the new coding system of ICD-10 impacts medical facilities and practices, even providers of medical coding online training and medical coding online courses, in a number of ways. Two areas where the effects are particularly difficult to assess and correctly address are the financial and operational aspects. Jvion, a consultancy specializing in…