Increase in Pay of Family Physicians and Primary Care Practitioners by CMS

Recently, CMS has proposed family practice coding guidelines that increases family physicians pay by 7% and that of other practitioners providing primary care services by 3-5%. This is part of the rule that will upgrade the policies related to payment and rates under MPFS for the year 2013. According to it, Medicare pays millions of physicians as well as non-physicians who actively provide healthcare services to beneficiaries of Medicare. CMS is making an ongoing effort to align program requirements across practices with the goal of creating one set of universal measures to be used in all programs.

This increase for family physicians is a result of the policy by the administration to encourage care that is focused on quality and is patient centric. CMS will pay the required amount that is needed to help a patient smoothly settle back in the community after getting released from the hospital. CMS will pay to the physician of the patient to coordinate the patient’s care in the 30 days.

The Value Modifier used in medical coding & billing that was included in the Affordable Care Act will be implemented as well and will provide various choices to physicians on how to participate. Based on the quality of care that is given to a beneficiary of Medicare, the Value Modifier determines the payments. The rule also gives the opportunity for physicians or groups to choose how the Value Modifier can be calculated based on their participation in the PQRS/PQRI. Physicians or groups that want to have payment adjusted with their performance based on the value modifier has a rule according to which high quality and low cost groups will receive more payment and vice versa.

Some other points included in the proposed rule are:

  • Additional Medicare preventive services to be included in the existing list that can be provided with the help of an interactive telecommunications system.
  • DME to be a direct requirement to get paid for certain Medicare DME items that are costly.
  • MPPR policy to be applied to the technical component of the subsequent diagnostic service of cardiovascular or ophthalmology provided by the same doctor to one particular patient on the same day.
  • Collection of data based on patient function to improvise Medicare pay for physical, occupational, speech language and pathology services.
  • Comments from public regarding advanced diagnostic molecular pathology services payment.
  • Payment by Medicare to physicians and non-physicians following Medicare for portable x-ray services.
  • Guidelines as to when Medicare payment will be made for interventional pain management services administered by CRNAs

Effective Web Sites: Automate and Enforce Web Governance With CMS/ECM

Issue:

What else than content maintenance functionality should the content editor interface provide to ensure overall site effectiveness?

Response

An effective Web site has two user interfaces, one for site visitors and one for content editors. Many companies spend enormous time and budget to maximize the visitors’ experiences but neglect the content editor interface. However, the editor interface contributes as well to site effectiveness. To maximize overall site effectiveness, the content editor interface should not only provide content maintenance functionality but also automate and enforce Web governance policies and processes. If Web governance compliance is not part of the editor interface, compliance monitoring results in additional workload, which decreases overall site effectiveness. During Web site development or site redesigns, Web teams focus mainly on increasing site visitors’ experiences. At many companies, Web site design is the result of a collaborative process including stakeholders from marketing, corporate communication, business, HR and IT.

The Web site is largely discussed and in the best case prototyped to get final validation prior development. The content editor interface however, is in most cases not part of this collaborative process. It is up to Web developers to implement it using their creativity. In most cases, this approach leads to an editor interface, which may just meet the basic objective – to facilitate content maintenance.

But an effective content editor interface should also automate and enforce Web governance to ensure for example site, navigation and page consistency across sites and during life-cycle.

Web governance defines the rules for content editors, business owners, developers, administrators and designers to operate, maintain and evolve Web sites and/or Intranets from a content, design and technology perspective. Web content management (WCM) or enterprise content management (ECM) are very effective solutions to automate and enforce Web governance. Companies that target to enforce Web governance through WCM or ECM need to design effective editor interfaces to automate and enforce Web governance policies and processes as much as possible.

Web governance can be divided into categories such as design, navigation, linking, interactions, legal issue, etc.. The design and navigation categories can be automated and enforced to a large extent like for example the following governance policies.

Web Governance Category – Design

Colors:

Governance Policy

Use only defined corporate colors to ensure high contrast for online reading

Editor Interface Feature

Provide contextual corporate color palette with the appropriate choices depending of the usage (for body text, backgrounds, page titles, etc).

Enforcement

Automatic due to listed choices.

Images:

Governance Policy

Each image needs to have an ALT text description, to ensure compliance with disability act section 508.

Editor Interface Feature

Provide online image library that are legally checked for copyright/ownership issues. For each image, which is used, the page owner needs to add an ALT text.

If no ALT text is added, then the page cannot be published (e.g. page owner is prompted to add an ALT text).If image is not part of library, page owner needs to upload image, which is then first validated by the legal department.

Enforcement

Verification of ALT text availability and legal aspects.

Web Governance Category – Navigation

Page Titles

Governance Policy

Each Web page needs to have a page title, which:

– clearly describes page content

– is less than six words

– is consistently placed.

Editor Interface Feature

Mandatory field for page title. If page title is not available or longer than six words, prompt editor to correct it. Placement of page title is fixed.

Enforcement

Verification of page title availability and length.

Companies that have already defined Web governance but not yet automated or enforced with their WCM / ECM should do it with the next major redesign. Be aware that enforcing governance may result in initial high workload for page owners to comply with Web governance (adding page titles, ALT texts, etc., on multiple up to hundred pages).

Companies that have not yet defined Web governance should define it to ensure that their Web site(s) and/or Intranets evolve as effective as possible. Define it step-by-step, start with strategic categories, which have an impact on site visitors’ experiences (Web governance categories: navigation, design, linking and content). Implement them in the next redesign and continue to define the remaining governance categories.

Companies that have Web site design standards or guidelines may be able to leverage them as Web governance policies. The Web team needs to ensure that the standards are up-to-date and

  • have corporate wide buy-in (e.g. not only from corporate communication or marketing),
  • are aligned with the corporate Web strategy (e.g. one common look & feel for all sites versus branding sites with different look & feel) and
  • reflect the company’s organization (e.g. centralized versus decentralized).

In a second step, add processes, define ownerships and enforcement to complete Web governance. For information about how to define and deploy effective Web site design standards, please refer to the Best Practice Guide: Defining Web site Design Standards.

Content Management Systems – The History and the Future

Content Management Systems (CMS) are any method of organising electronic information. With the rise of the internet, the phrase was adopted as a catch-all to describe a wide range of systems that allowed users to create, edit, manage and publish website content.

Although in the early 1990’s people were able to update some type of online content with products from both Microsoft and Lotus, the earliest example of a pure Content Management Tool came from Vignette with StoryServer around 1996. The next few years saw many CMS packages being released from the likes of Documentum, Interwoven and Broadvision.

Between 2000 and 2005, the sector went through a massive wave of merger and acquisitions leaving a number of users unsupported after packages were abandoned and difficulties as packages were merged.

By 2007 there were 3 types of Content Management System:

1) Software Editing

These systems deal with the editing on a local machine or network and then rely on publishing to upload the new content to the website. Typically these offline systems require installation of software before editing can be undertaken.

2) Online Editing

These systems typically require no software installation, giving flexibility to edit on any machine as long as a user has password access. Online content management systems can be very simple such as Wiki’s through to sophisticated CMS editor functions such as Vx.

3) Hybrid Systems

Hybrid systems allow users to edit content online through an online editing system, but allow for “checking out” of content to work away from the system before the content is put back into the online editor.

2008 and the future…

Content management systems have become extremely sophisticated allowing users to manage and manipulate text, images, documents, audio, video and animations.

New developments have brought the concepts behind Content Management Systems (non technical or design staff managing their websites) into other fields of the marketing mix. A number of systems have integrated email marketing functionality into their CMS, allowing tracking between the email and website functions.

Cutting edge systems have begun to bring the offline into the content management platform. Print materials, PDFs and other offline communications are now being managed through CMS systems in a similar way to websites and emails.

Web Design – Exactly Why CMS is So Very Important

When you have an online business or if you intend to get one, you already know that the success of your website will drastically depend upon your site’s popularity. So just how does a website obtain popularity you might ask? You can get more traffic by writing great content. Content is king when it comes to web design! A movement involving fresh, educational, and quality content is definitely in demand by a large number of online companies, businesses, organizations and individuals. However, the problem is in managing the content and also the design aspects regarding your website design. To accomplish this, you need to opt for a CMS-based website.

Content Management Systems (CMS) make it a lot easier to manage the content on your site. It is easy to handle all your content very quickly and do so with no need of employing a programmer or perhaps a webmaster. Style components can be re-structured considering all you actually have to do is adjust the particular templates.

One of the biggest reasons for utilizing a CMS is the fact that it helps you to save time. Rather than running to ones FTP program to help you add any kind of content, you are able to simply logon to the user interface and publish all your website content there. Web design and style adjustments can certainly be made in the same manner since you can alter one template in order to bring up-to-date your pages of content.

Securing all your data and content is actually less difficult also. Considering that information and details will be saved in the database, preserving the essential information is straightforward. All you will have to do is actually export the information if you want added safety measures. Some people like to have “layers” of security and a CMS helps to make that an easier task. If you want to duplicate any templates or data to an alternative site, you may simply add the exported data files.

You will also have the publishing abilities that a CMS offers. Publishing articles and other content was formerly executed manually with static sites. With a CMS, it’s possible to know what exactly is being published, specify the time frame for content to be published, and you may even immediately do away with outdated articles and other content. Plus if you want to bring extra features into your website, it’s easy to accomplish as well.

With the massive number of CMS lovers these days, free plugins and extensions are being made each day. The most renowned platforms are usually WordPress, Joomla, as well as Drupal. Each platform features internet sites that offer easy-to-follow plugins and extensions you may use to make publishing more streamlined and easier, enabling you to get more traffic, plus help you to increase your revenue. Numerous plugins can be obtained 100 % free plus the ones that are being sold seem to be fairly low-priced.

It’s also a lot easier to improve style and design components by way of CMS tools. As opposed to running through lots of HTML code, one can merely improve many elements concerning a website with the help of templates. You actually may modify a header, footer, sidebar, and incorporate widgets really quickly. There are even plugins and extensions that help you to change the web design elements by way of aiming and clicking on different web templates.

In summary, content management systems (CMS) present many amazing and convenient benefits to online marketers, businesses, organizations and individuals. Content publishing and web design are able to be completed much faster and easier once you have a content management system. Furthermore, common CMS systems have a solid community which tends to make CMS much more attractive. You will also have the ability to locate plugins to help you generate income from your site, join social sites, make it possible for targeted traffic to connect, and a lot more.

The issue now is exactly what CMS to utilize. Each and every system has their pluses and minuses. They likewise have totally different features as well as modification possibilities. The simplest way in making an obvious decision is to experiment with various platforms and then judge those that suit you better. Also you can pay a visit to message boards to see comments and consult with many other website owners to check out exactly how they’re using a particular content management system. Examine their style and design factors and also talk to site owners having websites which are similar to what you are going for.

Copyright © 2010 Michael A. LaHatte

Drupal CMS – How Useful It Is and for Whom?

There are many Content Management Systems (CMS) to construct a website upon. Actually the CMS is the foundation of the website to develop more web applications, at the time of building a website. Web designers and developers do that magic of converting static digital images, by processing through stages into a fully-functional website. After coding and marking up the site to convert into HTML, XHTML, and HTML5 hypertext languages, the next stage of careful selection of the most-proper CMS begins.

It is here the web developers have to visualize the future use of the proposed website and accordingly decide the right CMS platform to further develop the site. Drupal is open source free software. Therefore for economical website creation as well as continuous future usage for more features, many web developers and website owners prefer Drupal as the first option. Rather than calling it a CMS, it will be more fitting if Drupal is identified as Content Management Frame work for its abundance of adds-on extensions available for web development, and installation of assorted web solutions easily as required.

Ever since Drupal software solution was introduced for the core functions of a website in 2001, there have been many contributed modules added to it by the end users. These added modules and plug-ins are actually born out of individual experiences, as and when faced with hurdles and finding a solution for overcoming those problems, by the end-user community. More than 20,100 such community-developed add-on have come to enrich Drupal this way, to be used for avoiding similar problems by other users. Therefore Drupal content frame work has something to offer each website owner, desirous of integrating Drupal for their website’s purposes.

The flexibility of Drupal to program a website upon is the predominant reason how Drupal has become the choice of prospective website owners, to take care of the needs of their website – present and future as well. Web content management is the chief concern of all the website owners. Drupal answers this requirement ably. Publishing web content, editing, modifying, adding or deleting web pages etc. are made easier by Drupal.

For example, in the case of ecommerce sites, the need for organizing and updating the web portal with fresh contents such as catalogs, price-lists, brochures, graphics, and icons about the whole lot of merchandises offered for sale is immense. Drupal is best and most-flexible for publishing graphics, pictures, video, text etc. as also conducting polls and consumer interaction by comments/opinions. Propaganda newsletters or emails can be accomplished by easy-to-use interface.

By virtue of the fact that no technical knowledge is necessary for control and management of the web contents, and also administration of the ecommerce site remotely by the press of some buttons, Drupal CMS will be ideal for small and growing businesses; blogging sites; personal sites; cost-effective customization of ecommerce sites; bilingual usage sites; educational institution sites; government sites; and all public-service non-profit motive sites etc. where more common net-population is expected to visit and get benefited.

There are excellent experienced experts PSD to Drupal Conversion service providers online like letsgocss.com. Just give them a digital image and get back a successful Drupal-driven website of your own, to achieve success online.

Benefits of Joomla As a CMS

Joomla has become one of the most popular CMS because of the features it offers. With Joomla you can develop any kind of website be it simple one or a complex one. It provides better platform for creating corporate applications and web portals.

Joomla is a free and open source content management system for publishing content on the internet and intranet which helps in developing any kind of websites. It contains a model view controller web application framework which can be used independently too. Joomla Web Development provides a lot of flexibility to your online business and can help you make more sales.

With Joomla Templates, you can design website which is an attractive one and appeals to the visitors. Joomla offers different styles, colors and features. It also helps you design an organized layout that makes the web pages simple and easily navigable.

Moreover, Joomla CMS can be used by any user with less knowledge with a great ease. We can add new pages or we can even modify them using the CMS system it is providing. We can add content, images easily and can perform text formatting using the editor support. Joomla provides support for many languages which can be useful when you want to create website for non-English users. Users can easily switch to different language from an English website and this feature gives user friendliness to your website.

Groups of people can work on same website at the same point of time which means different authors can upload their content immediately instead of waiting for programmers or designers. In a Joomla website it is easy to give multiple user authentication that is number of people can log on to the site simultaneously with their individual permissions. Another nice feature of Joomla CMS is the use of extensions. These extensions provide additional functionality and Joomla gives different extensions which can be easily installed within the Joomla website.

It helps to manage all the content, pages, graphics and documents through a secure back-end administration system. Using the administration part, it is possible to create, edit, hide or delete the content quickly. It is very necessary that the website is SEO friendly for better performance and for earning maximum possible revenue. Joomla has a variety of built-in key SEO aspects, so that all the pages of website rank well on search engines.

Because of this, Joomla enjoys a huge market appeal as more and more people have realized the benefits it offers. Thus, Joomla Development gives lot of benefits for your business which can be utilized for making maximum revenue.

What Requirements Does A Government CMS Have To Meet?

Citizens expect and want timely information, programs and services from their local governments, which they can access on the Internet. For this purpose, government organizations need a government CMS – Content Management System – that provides them with the ideal framework to create, manage and update every aspect of their website content. Governments cannot provide their citizens a website that is dynamic and interactive unless they are using an unsurpassed content management solution. The right CMS can take a government website design to the next level and improve the experience of their online visitors.

Features of a Government Content Management System

Security

Security of a government website is the first and foremost feature. When creating a government website, from the instance of the content management system to the server have to be looked at. When creating the government website design, it is best to start with latest versions of the CMS, locking down the CMS, file extensions and the server, and secure extensions. There should be a list of security processes that should be followed.

Publishing Workflow

Another feature that should be implemented in a government CMS is a workflow publishing system to publish content. For a government organization, it is necessary to have a staging environment where content can be previewed and approved internally before it goes live.

Tracking Access Logs

A content management system can make it possible a government organization to keep track of which areas in the system are accessed, and hold relevant people responsible for actions, if something goes wrong. This is an important feature that can enable a government organization to be aware of the content being accessed by different users and any mistakes made by them. This means that the areas where mistakes are being made can be pinpointed. This can help a government organization to determine if further training is required in the CMS to reduce incorrect actions and mistakes in the future.

WCAG Compliancy

It was back in February 2010 that the WCAG 2.0 accessibility guidelines were announced, and ever since then, all National Government agencies must comply with them. Therefore, a government CMS should meet those guidelines. Although some state governments have yet to apply the requirements to meet WCAG 2.0, but moves are taking place to ensure that all government website comply with these guidelines in the future.

Access Level Control

The latest release of a content management system should come with access level control. This way, administrators of a government website get full control over who can access what content within the website. This is excellent when certain areas of a website need to be locked down to certain Departments within a Government Agency. Some simplified access level control should be implemented in the content management system so that access to certain users can be restricted.

A variety of factors have to be taken into consideration when websites are being designed and developed for a government organization. It becomes necessary to look at certain aspects, such as accountability, internal workflow, processes and website accessibility. These requirements can be fulfilled by incorporation the right government CMS into a government website design.

Drupal – CMS For Everyone on the Web

As your online business grows, you may encounter problems managing it. You may feel that for doing so, you require technical competence and staff. However, cost restrains you from hiring expensive technical resources. Here comes CMS in the picture!

Content Management System like Drupal helps you in managing the content of your website and you can change/update the content with its editing tabs integrated into the web pages and also monitor those changes easily and efficiently. Not just that, you have revision control on your website.

Drupal has now emerged as an essential part of every web hosting package available in the market. It entails a number of modules, which enable a user to develop, organize and manage the content of the website.

A user does not necessarily have to be a geek for using Drupal. All that is required is some basic technical knowledge base such as basic browsing, word processing etc. Nothing like advanced programming or HTML skills are needed to use this award-winning CMS. It comprises of an intuitive-to-use web installer that makes its installation process quite simple. Then, you need to choose your website design and the content types for the same.

This CMS has multiple benefits. It’s SEO friendly and enables you exercise a better control over the structure of URL of your website. It customizes the content of your website and helps your website gain better search engine rankings. It also entails Content Construction Kit, a tool that helps you come up with varied content types with great ease.

Using Drupal, you can easily come up with new interesting articles, stories, blogs, images, surveys etc. And it’s a unique feature! Even if you need to build a community web site, you can use the user management systems of this CMS.

Drupal facilitates creation of dynamic websites and photo galleries. The reason that attributes for its extensive use for this purpose lies in its programming language–PHP, which is compatible with a number of operating systems as Linux, Mac OS X etc. PHP gives better enhancements to your website and more so, all content is scripted.

It’s not just used for creating websites. It is also used for building e-commerce systems and unswerving branding owing to the great flexibility in its configuration. You might come across certain problems while learning this but these queries can be easily resolved as this CMS is backed by credible community support.

If we just have a glance at the online market, we’d find that many corporate websites are built using Drupal such as BBC, NASA etc.

So pull you socks to build your online presence with Joomla today! There are a number of good Web Hosting providers in the business such as LimeDomains, BlueHost, HostMonster etc. which host Drupal based websites.

7 Top Benefits of Drupal CMS

If your business has previously used a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress or Joomla and wondered, can I do better? What am I missing out on? Fortunately, one of the most flexible and functional CMS solutions recently launched its newest version. It's Drupal 7 and there's a whole lot of chatter about its powerful mix of business tools and easy maintenance.

Drupal is an open source CMS that gives its users a large degree of flexibility to modify, share, and distribute content (text, video, data, business services). Still, Drupal is more than a CMS. It is a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution that is perfect for a small business and scalable for any large enterprise. And don't take our word for it either, check out why it was rated InfoWorld 2011 Top Pick.

We've used a number of content management systems in the past, and while none are perfect, some do the job better than others. Drupal lets us stay ahead of the game and take advantage of the ever-evolving community platform that allows millions of contributors to update it constantly. Consider this – somewhere in the world, Drupal is being updated every second. Like Wikipedia, it's driven by people that care about how it functions and operates, rather than how it's marketed. It's the biggest open secret in web development.

1. Drupal Is Free

Many proprietary CMS systems charge significant monthly or yearly fees as part of the licensing agreement to use the software. For many small business web design needs, those costs are prohibitive and sometimes not fully disclosed during the sale. In addition, the subscription costs can range from a couple hundred dollars a year to sometimes tens of thousands of dollars a month for a large implementation. Drupal, on the other hand, is entirely free and doesn't have any hidden fees. The advantages are staggering when you take a look at the life cycle of a typical website, which typically can be three to six years.

2. Drupal Has High Profile Clients

Some of Drupal's highest profile customers include:

The White House
The Onion
Wake Forest University
Energy.gov
FedEx

3. Drupal Has Extensive API Support

When deciding on a CMS, it's crucial to know what kind of out-of-box support is available from third party applications for that specific tool. Today's savvy businesses run their organizations with the assistance of API's that let two programs talk to each other. Drupal has extensive API support including:

Salesforce Drupal API
YouTube Drupal AP I
Google Apps API
Sugar CRM for Drupal API
Constant Contact Drupal API
Facebook Drupal API
Twitter Drupal API
Ubercart Drupal API
Google Analytics Drupal API
AdSense Drupal API
Mailchimp Drupal API

Access more here drupal.org

There are thousands of modules available on Drupal.org and Drupal's extremely well-documented API lets you create your own custom modules.

4. Drupal Web Design Flexibility

Unlike many website content management systems that offer narrow frameworks and custom coding, Drupal comes out of the box ready to showcase your brand in an interactive, highly-useable environment. You can design (or "theme" in Drupal speak) your Drupal web design to match your business needs without many of the restrictions of previous CMS tools.
5. Drupal Is Search Engine Friendly

Once your website is live, search engine optimization (SEO) plays an integral part of your business's online marketing strategy. Drupal, created as a community platform, was inherently designed to be SEO friendly. In fact, it has a Ph.D. in SEO. Why make such a bold claim? Drupal has enormous flexibility to display content in a way search engines just can't resist. Some Drupal SEO Modules include:

Page Title: Enhance the HTML page header tag that shows up as

Joomla CMS Web Development Seems the Best Choice That Helps Save Future Spending

The growth of the internet is accruing the competition among many technologies on which the websites are being deployed. However, looking at the over all view the most preferred technology is an open source, which is totally free and allows one to construct as per their need, and make some amendments in the future seamlessly if required. In open source technology there are also many different sort of options' customers get to choose from. Joomla CMS Web Development is one of those open source technologies that is not only feasible in cost but also saves future spending of little alteration. And allow a user to make the variation of content, web banners, pic, etc by themselves.

Because of such adaptability Joomla Web Development has become one of the highest choices of users. Besides all those functionalities it also consumes less time to come up with the deployment, since most of the facet of Joomla Website Development is already being available, all it requires is just the little adjustments so that the solution comes to the end of one's requirement. If the website does not really have much of its aim then it becomes seamless for a Joomla Web Designer to choose ready Joomla web design / Joomla web templates, which suit the site most. Nonetheless, if the user is looking for the custom web design / templates – here the arduous task for Joomla web designer starts.

Alongside of the website development web design and template is also the facet of Joomla Web Development Services, which is again on high demand along with the website development. Joomla website design and Joomla Template Development helps existing customers to rejuvenate their old website with the new look and advanced technology.

Now when a user is looking for the customized solution it does not really become as hard as constructing a building for a company to execute. Yet it depends on the various things of the company such as an experience, work, capability and knack, through which a company can be judged well. So in order to not to squander the money and fulfill your requirement it is imperative to evaluate the company before designating the work.

Freelance Web Designer | WordPress Developer | Hong Kong