July 11, 2013 Gabriel Perna
article
With the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) releasing data on hospital outpatient charges and Medicare spending, the age of medical cost transparency may be upon us. In New York, one non-profit organization is already helping patients navigate troves of claims data to be better engaged with their care.
July 4, 2013 M. Wayne Craige
blog
It’s Monday July 8 and you woke up feeling sick, and you know you better see your doctor. In the office, your doctor looks you over, listens to your symptoms, but before he prescribes a drug, the doctor said, “Lets get a sample of your blood so that I can take a look at your Deoxyribonucleic Acid”. You heard me right, your DNA!
June 20, 2013 Rajiv Leventhal
news
The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), the sponsoring agency for the Florida Health Information Exchange (HIE), has announced that CommunityHealth IT has joined the exchange, bringing up to 2.2 million patients’ records onto the Florida HIE.
June 20, 2013 Gabriel Perna
news
For the first time, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) have integrated clinical and genomic information on cancer patients, the organization announced. For the first time, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) have integrated clinical and genomic information on cancer patients, the organization announced.
June 20, 2013 John DeGaspari
article
Gaps in patient care are a longstanding problem in many health provider systems, and especially this fiscal year, when hospitals face penalties for exceeding readmission thresholds set by the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Those penalties, under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are significant: 1 percent in Medicare payments for fiscal year 2013, rising to 3 percent in FY 2015, for avoidable hospital readmissions within 30 days for heart attack, heart failure or pneumonia.
June 20, 2013 David Raths
blog
Some CIOs blame told KLAS they blame meaningful use for Meditech 6.0’s immaturity, believing that Meditech would have had more resources to improve the product if it were not devoting so much time to meeting certification requirements.
June 14, 2013 John DeGaspari
blog
It’s a fact of life that everyone’s reflexes slow down with age, and most of us lucky enough to live to advanced age and still have a driver’s license eventually will need to consider giving up the privilege of driving. After all, driving is intertwined with all kinds of effects of aging—not only slower reflexes but poor eyesight, inability to make quick decisions, or side effects of medications. According to a recent study, clinicians are often the first to bring up the topic with elderly drivers of handing over the car keys, and I think healthcare IT can play a role in helping drivers make the transition.
June 13, 2013 Gabriel Perna
blog
With the issue of government transparency becoming the topic du jour on the heels of the recent NSA controversy, it’s fair to ask: have the CMS and HHS released enough claims data on hospital outpatient charges? Some, like athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush and U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., don’t seem to think so.
June 13, 2013 David Raths
blog
Vendors in the analytics-as-a-service space include Apixio, Explorys and Humedica. “This is going to be the way healthcare will consume big data,” said IDC Health Insights' Cynthia Burghard. “It is just too complicated for the average healthcare organization to invest in.”
June 13, 2013 Rajiv Leventhal
news
Four health systems, Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM, and the Charlotte, N.C.-based Premier healthcare alliance have come together to launch the Data Alliance Collaborative (DAC), with the goal to ensure healthcare providers get the data analytics and business intelligence they need to improve population health.
June 12, 2013 David Raths
blog
What if you could hire a team of software engineers to start from scratch in developing an IT system to fit the needs of your organization? Does that sound too good to be true? That is exactly what JenCare Neighborhood Medical Centers is doing.
June 12, 2013 Gabriel Perna
article
In this Healthcare Informatics podcast, Associate Editor Gabriel Perna interviews John Stanley, principal at Impact Advisors. When Stanley was on the podcast last, he talked about analytics as it relates to HIE. In this interview, he focuses on the emerging trend where providers and other stakeholders are using analytics and health IT to try and link clinical, genomic and even financial data.
