CALENDAR
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NEWS
Smoking ban reduces heart attacks...
(NRHA Rural Roads 2011)
10 Little-known Facts About E-cigarettes
Discovery Health, 2011
Geographic Differences in Potentially Preventable Readmission Rates in Rural and Urban Hospitals (Final Report)
Potentially preventable hospital readmissions (PPRs) among Medicare patients are examples of inefficiencies in the health care system. Policymakers are considering efforts to measure and publicly report preventable readmission rates and target hospitals with high rates for improvement by means of payment policy and technical assistance. To help inform the policy debate about readmissions of rural patients, this study estimated PPRs in three types of acute care hospitals: urban prospective payment system (PPS) hospitals, rural PPS hospitals and Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs).
HRSA/Office of Rural Health Policy Weekly Announcements
Week of October 4th-8th, 2010
A Comparison of Rural Hospitals with Special Medicare Payment Provisions to Urban and Rural Hospitals
Paid Under Prospective Payment (Final Report)
From the Rural Health Policy and Research Centers
This final report compares the financial performance and condition of rural hospitals with special Medicare payment provisions to urban and rural hospitals paid under prospective payment (UPPS and R-PPS hospitals, respectively). Nine ratios from the three most common categories of ratios used in financial statement analysis (profitability, liquidity, and capital structure) as well as four other ratios that are commonly used to evaluate rural hospital financial performance are assessed.
Initial EHR Certification Bodies Named
The Center for the Advancement of Health IT (AHIT) Newsletter
August 31, 2010
HHS Announces Key Step in National Initiative Toward Adoption of Electronic Health Records
The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT), Chicago, Ill. and the Drummond Group Inc. (DGI), Austin, Texas, were named today by the 
Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) as the first technology review bodies that have been authorized to test and certifyelectronic health record (EHR) systems for compliance with the standards and certification criteria that were issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services earlier this year. More...
A Comparison of Rural Hospitals with Special Medicare Payment Provisions to Urban and Rural Hospitals
Paid Under Prospective Payment (Final Report)
August, 2010
This final report compares the financial performance and condition of rural hospitals with special Medicare payment provisions to urban and rural hospitals paid under prospective payment (UPPS and R-PPS hospitals, respectively). Nine ratios from the three most common categories of ratios used in financial statement analysis (profitability, liquidity, and capital structure) as well as four other ratios that are commonly used to evaluate rural hospital financial performance are assessed.
National Rural Health Association Newsletter
July 2010
NRHA congratulates HHS on today's release of final rules regulating criteria for the electronic health record (EHR) incentive program or "meaningful use" and the release of final criteria for EHR standards necessary for vendor products to meet meaningful use certification. The final rule adopts significant changes and reflects many of the concerns raised by NRHA during the comment period. More...
