PORTLAND, Ore., May 1, 2013 -- Health care reform has resulted in some of the largest scale changes to the way health care is delivered and funded since the 1960s, providing unprecedented access, coverage and protections for American consumers. To help people better understand the variety of choices before them, Regence has launched a new website that is designed to help consumers and businesses navigate the new health care landscape.

A new bill would not require a transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10 code sets. Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) introduced the bill dubbed the "Cutting Costly Codes Act of 2013."

Healthcare reforms focused on “person-centered care” are the best means to improve care and could save an estimated $300 billion in net federal savings during the next decade, or more than $1 trillion over 20 years, according to an April 2013 Brookings Institution's Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform report.

Hospitals and health systems nationwide are projecting a significant shift in 2013 admissions from inpatient to outpatient settings as they transition toward new care delivery models, according to the Premier healthcare alliance’s spring 2013 Economic Outlook.

The Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive programs and the Office of the National Coordinator on Health IT’s (ONC’s) certification programs are insufficient to achieve widespread interoperability and electronic information exchange necessary to achieve true healthcare reform, national multi-stakeholder healthcare organization eHealth Initiative (eHI) told the ONC and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in an April 22 letter.

The Health IT Policy Committee’s (HITPC’s) newly formed FDA Safety Innovation Act Workgroup (FDASIA) kicked off its first meeting on April 29, and began to pursue its statutory purpose: proposing strategies and recommendations for a risk-based regulatory framework for health IT that promotes innovation, protects patient safety and avoids regulatory duplication.

In an effort to more directly engage patients in the medical product regulatory process, the FDA launched the FDA Patient Network website on April 23.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued a proposed rule that would update FY 2014 Medicare payment policies and rates for inpatient stays at general acute care and long-term care hospitals (LTCHs). Released on April 26, the proposed rule is designed to reduce the growth in healthcare costs while improving the quality of patient care, according to the agency.