Can 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, [...]

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Can 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 [...]

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5 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 [...]

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Online Consults Increasing, Despite Physicians’ Concerns

From February 11, 2013 article posted in InformationWeek HealthCare by Ken Terry New primary care model gains momentum as payers see cost-cutting potential and consumers demand better service. Online consultations are spreading fast now that payers have figured out how to use them to save money. Last week, Health Affairs published a paper by researchers [...]

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Insurers 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 [...]

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When 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10, 2013 article on CNET.com by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore A new study finds the majority of doctors copying potentially out-of-date information from previous notes and other documents and pasting them into patient progress reports.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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States Must Play Catch-up on Health Overhaul

Obama win means healthcare reform will move ahead. From article posted on Bloomberg Press -November 7, 2012 President Barack Obama’s re-election means his overhaul of the U.S. health-care system, opposed by most Republicans, will move ahead in all 50 states, with or without the cooperation of their governors. State officials who held off implementing some [...]

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National Health Information Exchange: Why The Delay?

From November 5, 2012 article on InformationWeek.com Hurricane Sandy took many lives and caused billions of dollars in damage. But so does a healthcare system that still refuses to embrace interoperability. There’s nothing like a common enemy or problem to bring people together. In the days since Hurricane Sandy, we’ve witnessed countless acts of heroism [...]

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Patient Engagement: One Secret To True Healthcare Reform

From October 17, 2012 article on InformationWeek.com All one has to do is listen to the Democratic and Republican rhetoric about the role of government in healthcare to get a sense of how contentious this issue has become. And anyone who has ever spent time dealing with his local DMV or Social Security office can [...]

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Meaningful Use Needs Mobile Magic

Mobile technology could play a huge role in meeting the federal MU regulations, but the Stage 2 rulebook virtually ignores this potential. Article from InformationWeek, October 9, 2012 Mobile apps and devices have taken the healthcare industry by storm. So why is the word “mobile” mentioned only once in the 672 pages of Meaningful Use [...]

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