July 31, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
The New York Times Magazine this past weekend had a really interesting cover story on applying Iranian healthcare principles to rural Mississippi. This inspiring story in Mississippi makes me wonder how patient engagement tools like personal health records and remote monitoring can be integrated with this community health approach to truly transform a population’s health.
July 31, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
Query Health is is in the process of developing standards for distributed population queries. How will project leaders be facing the complexities involved with testing the dual languages, the Health Quality Measure Format (HQMF) standard and i2b2, in the five Query Health pilots this summer?
July 24, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
When selecting the right health information exchange vendor partner, it really pays to dig deep to really asses the vendor's capabilities. Here's some good advice on what pertinent questions to ask, before getting into bed with a vendor.
July 20, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
A huge part of putting the patient at the center of care, and which will be integral in creating patient-centered medical homes and accountable care organizations, is really investing in social media. Healthcare organizations can test the social media waters by piloting strategies on their own employees before deploying them to their patients.
July 17, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
Much important work is currently underway to develop vocabulary, packaging, and transport standards for health information exchange (HIE), according to last week’s National eHealth Collaborative ONC Anniversary Event, which highlighted the collaborative work of the Beacon Communities and seven EHR companies (NextGen, Greenway, GE, Allscripts, Vitera, Cerner and SuccessEHS) that are working together to accelerate interoperability and exchange.
July 6, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
Group Health, the Seattle-based integrated delivery system that is both a payer and a provider, is the very definition of a model student when it comes to health information exchange (HIE). I make this comparison because the system has done well in marshalling its resources internally and externally to create a pragmatic approach for exchange. However, like many HIEs around the country, Group Health is still studying new approaches to find what works.
July 2, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
While reporting on industry reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling to uphold the main parts of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on June 28, it was clear that many experts believe the landmark event did little to change the IT trajectory of healthcare organizations. What was apparent though was this decision validated and encouraged the initiatives organizations were already taking to digitize healthcare records to provide for better analyses and rein-in climbing healthcare costs.
June 25, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
In healthcare’s march toward accountable care, many see a low-hanging fruit to be reducing necessary testing. Thomson Reuters estimates that the U.S. healthcare system wastes between $250-$325 billion annually on unnecessary care in the form of diagnostic lab or imaging tests performed to protect against malpractice exposure or unwarranted surgical procedures. What can physicians and patients do to reduce the waste?
June 11, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
In a look at what payers are doing to shake up the ACO market, I blogged on Friday about how Cigna was collaborating with its medical group partners to reduce unnecessary medical costs. In this blog I want to point out some other recent acquisitions in the space that might be setting the stage for more to come, as well as share some interesting perspectives from those watching this space carefully.
June 8, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
How long will it take to incorporate clinical data in payer-led ACOs and will most of these efforts focus on reducing medical costs like unnecessary testing, rather than other population health elements like reduced readmissions and chronic disease management? I’ll take a look at what payer action is happening now in the ACO market in a two-part blog series.
