WEDI launches ICD-10 survey; Hospital loses access to EHR after AT&T outage;

News From Around the Web

> The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange has launched a survey to assess ICD-10 progress. Their aim is to track and update industry progress on ICD-10, and they plan to do periodic surveys until it is implemented. Survey

> In Wilmington, N.C., New Hanover Regional Medical Center suffered an outage from AT&T that caused them to have to track patient information the "old-fashioned way"--with pen and paper-- for a seven-hour period last week. A hospital spokesperson says patient care continued as normal despite being cut off from the hospital's electronic health record system. Article

> The Central Ohio Health Information Exchange (COHIE) has agreed to add its roster of 24 hospitals and healthcare systems to the statewide CliniSync network, EHR Intelligence reports. CliniSync serves 6,500 physicians, allowing providers to exchange registration information, lab data, blood bank, pathology, and radiology reports, and is planning to add transcribed reports and immunization registries for many facilities in the future. Article

Health Insurance News

As WellPoint announced its unexpectedly high fourth-quarter earnings, the second largest insurer remained cautious about its future this year, yet hopeful about 2014. WellPoint's net income rose 38 percent to $464.2 million last quarter, up from 335.3 million. Article

Two former Humana employees have been charged with bribery and racketeering for accepting more than $4 million to drive some of the insurer's Medicare business to a South Carolina company. Former Humana sales managers James Wenger and Glenn Fine allegedly took the bribes to steer insurance agents and brokers to Cutler & Associates, an insurance middleman company in Columbia, S.C., to sell Humana Medicare Advantage and Medicare Prescription Drug plans to Medicare beneficiaries, reported the Louisville Courier-Journal. Article

Medical Imaging News

Revealing the costs of expensive imaging tests in advance--transparent pricing--has no effect on the number of tests physicians order for their patients, according to a study published online this month in the Journal of the American College of Radiology. Article

> Scientists have developed a miniature imaging system that can be swallowed by patients in order to image the gastrointestinal tract. The device is described in a study published online in the journal Nature Medicine. Article

And Finally... Sometimes, you just can't control a chicken wing craving. Article