September 13, 2013 John DeGaspari
blog
Identity theft is a serious crime that can destroy the credit rating of victims and take years to set straight. A growing subset of the crime is medical identity theft, the subject of 2013 Survey on Medical Identity Theft, a report released by the Ponemon Institute this week; all of the survey’s respondents have experienced some form of medical identity theft.
September 12, 2013 Rajiv Leventhal
blog
As we progress to the new healthcare, keeping people healthy will force healthcare providers to do things such as prevent hospital readmissions, or keep people from needing a hospital stay at all. And that will happen only if providers have some insight into what patients are doing at home.
September 11, 2013 John DeGaspari
article
Medical identity fraud has increased nearly 20 percent compared to the year before in the U.S., affecting an estimated 1.84 victims and having a total out-of-pocket medical costs incurred by medical identity theft victims to be $12.3 billion. Those are takeaways of the 2013 Survey on Medical Identity Theft, an annual survey now in its fourth year, which was released yesterday by the Ponemon Institute LLC, Traverse City, Mich., and sponsored by Portland, Ore.-base ID Experts. The report’s release roughly coincided with the launch (on August 29) of the Medical Identity Fraud Alliance (MIFA), an industry group formed to raise public awareness and to come up with potential ways to address the medical identity theft.
September 11, 2013 Mark Hagland
article
Fast on the heels of an announcement by the ONC that the agency was launching a patient matching initiative, CHIME’s Russ Branzell gave HCI’s Mark Hagland an industry-first interview regarding CHIME’s praise for ONC’s announcement, and CHIME’s response to that announcement.
September 9, 2013 Rajiv Leventhal
news
A new 24/7 remote monitoring system from the Mayo Clinic will improve care and shorten hospital stays for critically ill patients, according to Mayo officials in a recent announcement. The Enhanced Critical Care program will offer monitoring of the sickest patients at six Mayo Clinic Health System hospitals.
September 6, 2013 Rajiv Leventhal
news
Of the more than 300 events related to electronic health record (EHR) software default values analyzed by the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority, three percent resulted in unsafe conditions or prolonged hospitalization of patients, according to the Authority’s new report.
September 4, 2013 Rajiv Leventhal
article
The Medical Center of Central Georgia recently transitioned to CPOE, but the hospital remains in the minority of those that had done so until very recently. Meanwhile, the challenges that linger for the hospitals that have yet to get on board remain tough to overcome.
September 4, 2013 David Raths
news
Sept. 4 marked the last Health IT Policy Committee meeting under the direction of Farzad Mostashari, M.D., as national coordinator of health IT. The meeting saw lively discussion on two fronts: first, recommendations regarding the development of a risk-based regulatory framework and strategy for health information technology; and second, progress on the meaningful use work group’s efforts to develop a framework for outcome-oriented measures as part of Stage 3 of meaningful use.
August 30, 2013 Linda Minghella
article
Having an effective response plan is critical for mitigating the impact of downtime, and your organization has likely put a tremendous amount of thought and care into its contingency plan. But your plan may have an Achilles’ heel that your organization is completely unaware of—a weakness that could leave your organization as poorly prepared as if you had no contingency plan at all. Where are the holes in your plan? Find them by asking a simple question: What is the longest hypothetical outage you have planned for?
August 20, 2013 Rajiv Leventhal
news
A new tool developed by the American College of Surgeons has been designed to quickly and easily estimate patient-specific postoperative complication risks for almost all operations, according to research findings in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.
August 20, 2013 John DeGaspari
news
Emergency departments are not meeting the needs of senior citizens, according to a international study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.
August 19, 2013 Mark Hagland
blog
It was fascinating to read a recent account in the July/August issue of “Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare” about a Six Sigma project around improving perioperative outcomes and processes. Not only was the case study a worthwhile read in itself, it clearly had implications for healthcare IT leaders.