Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
See the following -
Rethinking MACRA, a Follow Up by John Halamka
In my blog posts, I speak from the heart without a specific political or economic motivation. Although I’ve not written about highly controversial subjects such as religion, gun control, or reproductive policy, some of the topics in my posts can be polarizing. Such as was the case with MACRA. Some agreed with my initial analysis that clinicians will have a hard time translating complex MACRA payment processes into altered clinical behavior. Others felt I was overharsh, negative and inappropriate. It’s never my intent to criticize people, instead I want encourage dialog about ideas. In that spirit, here’s my opinion on how we should evolve from fee for service to pay for value/outcomes...
- Login to post comments
RWJF Awards Grant to PatientsLikeMe to Develop New Measures for Healthcare Performance
PatientsLikeMe has been awarded a $900,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to help jumpstart changes that will amplify the patient voice in the measurement of healthcare performance. “We have an abundance of clinical measures, but we need to better incorporate the voice of the patient into performance measurement” A portion of the grant funds a collaboration between PatientsLikeMe and the National Quality Forum (NQF) to develop, test and facilitate the broader use of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) to assess patient-reported health status.
- Login to post comments
Scenarios for Health Care Reform (Part 2 of 2)
Some health care providers balk at the requirement to share data, but their legal and marketing teams explain that they have been doing it for years already with companies whose motives are less commendable. Increasingly, the providers are won over. The analytics service appeals particularly to small, rural, and safety-net providers. Hammered by payment cuts and growing needs among their populations, they are on the edge of going out of business and grasp the service as their last chance to stay in the black...
- Login to post comments
Session To Focus On EHR-Billing Controversy
The controversy over the appropriate use of health information technology systems to streamline workflow while not fraudulently increasing healthcare claims will get a public airing early next month. Read More »
- Login to post comments
Sharp Memorial Hospital And Doctors Medical Center Of Modesto Earn Top Rankings In Independent California Patient Engagement Index
Axial Exchange, Inc., a pioneer in using mobile apps to deepen the patient’s role in improving outcomes, today announced the results of its California Patient Engagement Index (PEI) [...]. Read More »
- Login to post comments
Shortened Bidding Process Limited Obamacare Contractor Options
The Oct. 1 deadline to launch HealthCare.gov made the Obama administration use an accelerated bidding system that limited the choice of contractors to only four companies, Bloomberg reports. Read More »
- Login to post comments
Strengthening Protection of Patient Medical Data
Americans seeking medical care expect a certain level of privacy. Indeed, the need for patient privacy is a principle dating back to antiquity, and is codified in U.S. law, most notably the Privacy Rule of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which establishes standards that work toward protecting patient health information. But the world of information is rapidly changing, and in this environment, U.S. rules fall precariously short in protecting our medical data...
- Login to post comments
Summary Of “ITdotHealth II” – The 2012 Harvard Health IT Meeting
The following is an overview of the conference, held September 10-11, 2012. In several weeks, we will post a complete executive summary, as well as videos and slide presentations from the event. Read More »
- Login to post comments
Telehealth From The Direct Service Provider Perspective
A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend the American Telemedicine Association Policy Summit in Washington, D.C. This turned into two very meaningful days for those of us who are involved in the industry, but I’m thinking the people who couldn’t go might appreciate what was said (or not said). Read More »
- Login to post comments
The Appeal of Graph Databases for Health Care
A lot of valuable data can be represented as graphs. Genealogical charts are a familiar example: they represent people as boxes, connected by lines that represent parent/child or marriage relationships. In mathematics and computer science, graphs have become a discipline all their own. Now their value for health care is emerging. Graph computing made a significant advance this past February in the form of a Graph Data Science (GDS) library for the free and open source Neo4j graph database. Graph databases are proving their value in clinical research and public health; I wonder whether they can also boost analytics for providers. This article explains what's special about graph databases, and some applications in health care highlighted by recent webinars offered by the Neo4j company.
- Login to post comments
The CMS and ONC Final Rules Arrive
Steve Posnack from ONC declared today IT Bonanza Day. The Interoperability Roadmap, CMS Meaningful Use Final Rules with a Comment Period (Stage 2 and 3) as well as the ONC 2015 Certification Rule were published today...Here’s my first impression: It remains to be seen how the comment period on the EHR Incentive Programs final rule will be used to align the Meaningful Use program with the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) effort. It would not surprise me that the CMS final rules are not really final...
- Login to post comments
The Power Of The Blue Button
In August 2010, just 25 months ago, President Obama announced that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was going to make Veterans’ personal health records available to them online with something called the “Blue Button.” Read More »
- Login to post comments
The Third-Leading Cause Of Death Is Preventable, But Candidates Don't Mention It
It is more likely to kill you than terrorism. It has profoundly impacted virtually every American family. So this election year, why aren’t politicians at all levels of government talking about the third-leading cause of death in America—preventable errors in healthcare? The statistics are staggering: more than 500 patients per day are killed by errors, accidents and infections in hospitals alone. Medical errors kill more people annually than breast cancer, AIDS or drug overdoses...
- Login to post comments
Trying To Lower Readmissions? Give Your Patients A Health App
On October 1 2012, the CMS Readmission Reduction Program kicked in - much to the consternation of 2,217 hospitals that will be penalized. This followed 18 months of hand wringing that began when the program was introduced as part of the Affordable Care Act in March 2010. Read More »
- Login to post comments
U. S. Electronic Health Record Initiative: A Backlash Growing?
There seems to be a slow but steady backlash growing among healthcare providers against the U.S. government’s $30 billion initiative to get all its citizens an electronic health record, initially set to happen by 2014 but now looking at 2020 or beyond. Read More »
- Login to post comments