Access to EHR Notes Lauded by Patients, Providers
From article in in the May issue of HealthLeaders magazine. In a pilot, a system which permits patients to view all the notes in their electronic health records was such a hit with hospital patients and physicians that Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Geisinger Health System are dramatically expanding their OpenNotes programs. Possibly [...]
Read moreAn End to Medical-Billing Secrecy?
Article By Steven Brill From Time Magazine, May 08, 2013 Our hospital bill is about to get a thorough examination. Acting on the suggestion of her top data crunchers at the department’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius released an enormous data file on May 8 that [...]
Read moreUnder Obamacare program, doctor visits would become data points
Article in Washington Post April 23, 2013 A new nonprofit is putting millions of Obamacare dollars towards an effort to turn routine doctor visits into a treasure trove of data on what medical treatments work best. The Affordable Care Act created the Patient Centered Research Outcomes Institute (PCORI) to support comparative effectiveness research, studies that [...]
Read moreCan Twitter help predict epidemics?
From article posted in The Salt Lake Tribune – March 6, 2013 Twitter users send around 500 million tweets a day, an endless fire hose of information about how people feel, what they’re doing, what they know and where they are. For epidemiologists and public health officials, it’s a potential gold mine of data, [...]
Read moreCan the Cleveland Clinic Save American Health Care?
Salaried doctors. Great care. The administration used them as a model and a goal for Obamacare. But will it work outside of Cleveland? From Story by Megan McArdle featured in The Daily Beast February 26, 2013 “The best doctors are not motivated by money.” It’s a common sentiment (this particular example comes from the comments [...]
Read more5 Ways To Improve Healthcare Information Exchanges
From article posted on HealthInformation – HealthCare February 19, 2013 Recent comments made by a number of leaders throughout the industry show clear discontentment with the state of health information exchanges. As William Yasnoff, MD, PhD, president of the Health Record Banking Alliance, recently pointed out, the current nationwide network of health information exchanges is [...]
Read moreInsurers press doctors to file more claims electronically
From article posted on – The Hill – Healthwatch, February 5, 2013 The number of claims submitted and processed electronically has almost doubled over about the past decade, according to data released Tuesday by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). AHIP said electronic claims rose from 44 percent in 2002 to 94 percent in 2011. But [...]
Read moreHIPAA Changes Could Create New Bureaucratic Burdens
From January 23, 2013 article by Michelle McNickle, Associate Editor of InformationWeek Healthcare Modifications to HIPAA may take the focus off patients and pile on administrative work. Changes coming to the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rule mean added administrative work, and they could mean additional reporting, said Lisa Sotto, head of Hunton & Williams’ global [...]
Read moreHIPAA Final Rule Raises Fines for Non-Compliance
By Dom Nicastro, HealthLeaders Media, January 22, 201 The HIPAA omnibus final rule released by the Department of Health & Human Services January 17 will cost hospitals some time and money in regulation analysis, training, and policy revision, but shouldn’t break the bank, healthcare leaders and privacy and security experts say. The HIPAA “mega rule,” [...]
Read moreWhen it comes to patient records, doctors guilty of the old copy-paste
January 10, 2013 article on CNET.com by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore A new study finds the majority of doctors copying potentially out-of-date information from previous notes and other documents and pasting them into patient progress reports. Ah, the old copy/paste. Such a handy keyboard shortcut for such a wide range of applications. But would you want [...]
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