June 19, 2013
Medication misuse and lack of adherence is a $200 billion problem in the U.S. healthcare system, according to a new report from the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, a Danbury, C.T. consulting firm. The report, Avoidable Costs in U.S. Healthcare: The $200 Billion Opportunity from Using Medicines More Responsibly, says that this problem represents eight percent of the country’s annual healthcare expenditures, much of which comes through avoidable readmissions and outpatient treatments.
June 19, 2013
The American Medical Association (AMA) has named Robert M. Wah, M.D., who was the first ever deputy national coordinator in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), as its President-Elect. Dr. Wah will be sworn in a year and will serve for a one-year term.
June 19, 2013
Healtheway, a non-profit collaborative effort for health data interoperability between private and public organizations, has announced its nine founding organizations for the eHealth Exchange initiative. The group includes health IT heavyweight, Epic (Verona, Wisc.), the American Medical Association (AMA), and integrated care delivery provider, Kaiser Permanente (Oakland, Calif.).
June 18, 2013
An initiative on Facebook single-handily led to a 21-fold increase of people who registered themselves as an organ donor in a single day, researchers at Johns Hopkins University recently discovered. The results of the study indicate that social media may be the perfect way to battle the static number of donors in the country.
June 18, 2013
According to a new report from the Orem, Utah-based KLAS Research, integration with electronic medical record (EMR) systems is one of the biggest barriers to telehealth adoption in a provider setting. Even as providers increasingly use and invest in telehealth solutions, no single electronic medical record (EMR) vendor has established itself in a leader in the space, the report found.
June 17, 2013
On June 17, Donald M. Berwick, formerly acting administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), announced officially that he was entering the 2014 race for governor of the commonwealth of Massachusetts
June 17, 2013
Two regional health information organizations in New York City and Long Island have announced plans to merge, creating one of the largest RHIOs in the country.With the merger, Healthix Inc. and the Brooklyn Health Information Exchange (BHIX) would provide access to the health records of over 8 million people in New York City and Long Island, and be managed by a unified team supporting 50 hospitals, 25 nursing homes and many physician practices and other healthcare organizations.
June 17, 2013
The Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) has announced the release of a draft of new best practices that will bring more consistency, clarity, and transparency to patient financial interactions.
June 17, 2013
California Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) continues to advocate for health IT, as he reintroduced a bill that would aim to promote various technologies in the industry through marketplace incentives, grants, and increased workforce retraining.
June 14, 2013
Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) has recently critiqued the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for their inability to create a joint, integrated electronic health record (EHR) system.
June 14, 2013
According to a survey of 139 hospital and health system executives by the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA), only 20 percent of physicians believe they are “very prepared” and have the necessary infrastructure to support quality and outcomes-based management. This reinforces the need for services that will help hospitals as they work with their physicians and physician practices to transition to the new models of care.
June 13, 2013
Two reports from AmericanEHR Partners— an online resource designed to aid the medical community with the selection and use of electronic health records— suggest that tablets are of greater use for clinical purposes than smartphones, based on a survey of nearly 1,400 physicians.
June 13, 2013
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford is notifying nearly 13,000 patients by mail that a password-protected, non-functional laptop computer that could potentially contain limited medical information on pediatric patients was stolen from a secured, badge-access controlled area of the hospital sometime between May 2 and May 8.
June 13, 2013
Research released on June 13 by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) suggests that overall readiness of healthcare providers to meet the Oct. 1, 2014 compliance date for the transition to the ICD-10 coding system continues to lag. The greatest concern, when it comes to physician groups, the research found, is the lack of communication and critical coordination between physician practices and their essential trading partners, including claims clearinghouses, EHR vendors and practice management system vendors, regarding software updates and testing.
June 13, 2013
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.
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