At the third annual mHealth Summit in Washington D.C., major players in the mobile arena noted the impact mobile phones and other devices have and will continue to have both in the US and across the globe. Paul Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm, the closing keynote speaker at the mHealth Summit, predicted nearly 4 billion smart phones would be sold between now and 2014. “The mobile device in your hand gives you [...]
Despite what you’ve been told all these years, your dreadful handwriting is not the only cause of prescription mistakes. In fact, a recent study suggests that outpatient computer-generated prescriptions may be just as error-prone as your old paper versions. That study found that nearly 12% of the computer-generated prescription—all of them from nonhospital physician offices—included at least one error, and more than one-third of those had potential for harm, according [...]
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) said Wednesday that a proposal to implement “blended” payment rates for Medicaid is “on the table” in negotiations over raising the federal debt limit. This proposal could save the government up to $100 billion over 10 years, the Bureau of National Affairs reports. Currently, the federal government pays separate matching rates to states for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Under the [...]
Health plan executives say their three major challenges are figuring out how to deal with healthcare reform, the health insurance industry’s systemic shift from wholesale to retail business and bending the cost curve. Resolving the challenges will require health plans to shift their focus from group to individual sales, identify and test new behavior predictors and shorten the timeline of product development. The findings were part of a session about [...]
The Obama administration on Friday said it would stop granting new waivers to the health-care overhaul in September following sharp opposition from Republicans who cited the waivers in their bid to undermine the law. As of the end of May, the administration had granted 1,433 waivers to a part of the 2010 law that prevents employers and other health-plan providers from capping annual benefit payouts below $750,000 a year. Those [...]
The Veterans Administration’s new resource allocation process uses a standardized electronic model, but the transparency of networks’ decisions for allocating resources to medical centers is limited, a new GAO report concludes. [Editor's Desk: This Week in Government Health IT.] In its April 29 report, GAO recommends that the VA require networks to provide rationales for all adjustments made to allocations proposed by VA’s resource allocation model, and that it develop written [...]
“OCR’s requested budget will support our ability to protect the public’s right to equal access and opportunity to participate in and receive services from all the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) programs without facing unlawful discrimination, and to protect the privacy and security of individuals with respect to their personal health information. OCR’s performance objectives are in line with HHS’ objectives for transforming the healthcare system, increasing access to high quality, effective [...]
Seven rural hospitals in Texas will implement certified electronic health records software from two Texas-based vendors to go after meaningful use incentive payments. Cameron-based Central Texas Hospital, with six facilities totaling 305 beds, will do a fast-track deployment of integrated and Web-hosted clinical/financial management software from eCareSoft, Austin. The new vendor is a subsidiary of Expert Sistemas Computacionales, which has a 40 percent market share in Mexico and now is [...]
This week, a loose federation of left-leaning groups is convening nearly 200 gatherings to peddle the virtues of health-care reform. A women’s speak-out in Philadelphia. A small-business round-table discussion in Albuquerque. A fish fry for seniors in Columbia, S.C. From the Obama administration alone, 42 officials are fanning out to events in 22 states. The choreography coast to coast is a birthday party, of sorts, to mark the year that [...]
HHS’ Health Resources and Services Administration has awarded three contracts totaling $9.2 million to the Georgia Health Policy Center to support programs that use health IT and other strategies to promote access to health care in rural areas of the U.S., the Atlanta Business Chronicle reports. GHPC is part of Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies (Atlanta Business Chronicle, 3/10). Under the contracts, GHPC’s Community Health Systems [...]
The HHS Office for Civil Rights plans to uses to powers authorized under the HITECH Act to tighten up a host of security and privacy requirements, as well as exponentially increase the financial penalties for HIPAA privacy and security violations. Adam Greene, senior health IT and privacy advisor in the OCR, outlined a slew of changes to existing regulations. The final HITECH privacy, security and breach notification rules will arrive [...]
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), recently signed into law by President Obama, provides welcome news to technology suppliers who are facing a 0.1 percent 2009 U.S. growth rate, according to new research from IDC’s Industry Insights Companies. “With all the uncertainty surrounding the specifics of the new economic stimulus package, one thing is certain – there will be a large amount of government money flowing towards technology spending,” said IDC’s [...]
By Mary Mosquera The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has awarded a total of $80 million more for its regional extension center, state health information exchange and community college workforce programs to boost their support of providers becoming meaningful users of electronic health records. More funds will strengthen the momentum of these programs, which ONC launched last year, as physicians and hospitals begin to register for the [...]
The American Medical Association (AMA) and 103 state and specialty medical societies are urging the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to revise the Medicare e-prescribing penalty policy, which would penalize physicians in 2012 if they don’t e-prescribe in the first six months of 2011. The letter, sent by the AMA to HHS Secretary Sebelius on Dec. 10, stated that the groups believe the e-Rx penalty policy will hurt [...]
The federal stimulus money for “meaningful use” of EHRs was supposed to be exactly that–a stimulus–to encourage health IT adoption and quality improvement. If some new survey numbers are to believed, many healthcare organizations are making long-term plans to sustain and even increase their IT spending even after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act cash runs out. More than 80 percent of the 200 healthcare organizations surveyed by Boston-based Beacon [...]
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