Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

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DOD Partners To Combat Brain Injury

Ellen Crown | NCO Journal | August 19, 2013

Experts from the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs gathered Aug. 14 at the Military Health System Research Symposium to discuss the future of research on mental health and traumatic brain injury. Read More »

DoD, VA Establish Two Multi-Institutional Consortia To Research PTSD And TBI

Press Release | Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) | August 10, 2013

In response to President Obama’s Executive Order, the [DoD and VA] highlighted today the establishment of two joint research consortia, at a combined investment of $107 million to research the diagnosis and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) over a five-year period. Read More »

Don't Overlook Fraud In EHRs, OIG Cautions CMS

Jacqueline Fellows | HealthLeaders Media | January 9, 2014

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has eagerly pushed EHRs onto healthcare providers without adequately addressing the risk of fraud, suggests a report from the Office of Inspector General. Read More »

Double Down: Obamacare Will Increase Avg. Individual-Market Insurance Premiums By 99% For Men, 62% For Women

Avik Roy | Forbes | September 25, 2013

For months now, we’ve been waiting to hear how much Obamacare will drive up the cost of health insurance for people who purchase coverage on their own. Last night, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services finally began to provide some data on how Americans will fare on Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchanges. [...] Read More »

Drug And Device Studies Being Withheld Illegally

Don McCanne | Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) | November 4, 2013

Randomized clinical trials are a critical means of advancing medical knowledge. Clinical trials depend on the willingness of participants to expose themselves to the risks of randomization, blinding, and unproven interventions. The ethical justification for these risks is that society will eventually benefit from the knowledge gained from the trial. [...] Read More »

Drug-resistant ‘Nightmare Bacteria’ Show Worrisome Ability to Diversify and Spread

Press Release | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health | January 16, 2017

A family of highly drug-resistant and potentially deadly bacteria may be spreading more widely—and more stealthily—than previously thought, according to a new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Researchers examined carbapenem resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) causing disease in four U.S. hospitals. They found a wide variety of CRE species. They also found a wide variety of genetic traits enabling CRE to resist antibiotics, and found that these traits are transferring easily among various CRE species..

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Duplicate IT Systems Cost HHS Millions

Ashley Gold | FierceHealthIT | September 13, 2013

An auditor found more than $300 million in duplicative IT systems at three different government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services--which has six duplicative systems costing $256 million alone--according to a new Government Accountability Office report. Read More »

EFF Welcomes Brian Behlendorf to Board of Directors

Rebecca Jeschke | Electronic Frontier Foundation | February 15, 2013

EFF is extraordinarily pleased to officially announce a new addition to our Board of Directors: entrepreneur and technologist Brian Behlendorf. Read More »

Effort Aims To Protect Patients In Telemedicine Practices

Andis Robeznieks | ModernPhysician.com | July 26, 2013

If a patient in Wyoming has a complaint about a doctor in Colorado he is seeing via teleconference, it's unclear which state's medical licensing board would investigate. Read More »

EHealth To Obama: We Can Run HealthCare.gov

Ken Terry | InformationWeek Healthcare | October 31, 2013

eHealth, which operates a leading online health insurance site, ehealthinsurance.com, has proposed that it temporarily take over the enrollment process for HealthCare.gov while government contractors try to fix the federally run insurance exchange, which has had multiple problems in signing people up for health insurance. Read More »

Embarrassing New GAO Report On Hospital Safety Has Two Surprising Bright Spots

Leah Binder | Forbes | March 15, 2016

Hospitals are flummoxed by the problem of patient safety, according to a report issued by the Government Accounting Office (GAO) just in time for this week’s Patient Safety Awareness Week. Issued at the request of ranking members of the Senate Committee on Finance and Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), respectively, the report reveals three explanations on why hospitals find it so difficult to address patient safety. I am summarizing, but I am not exaggerating...

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Establishing Trust And Interoperability In The Post-NwHIN Governance Era

Deven McGraw | iHealthBeat | September 27, 2012

At the September meeting of the Health IT Policy Committee, National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari announced that the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT was dropping its plans to issue regulations setting voluntary "rules of the road" for participation in the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN). Read More »

Executive Spotlight: Don Mestas, Harris VP On Healthcare Offerings, M&A Activity And Ongoing VA Work

David J. Barton | ExecutiveBiz | March 20, 2013

Don Mestas serves as vice president of government healthcare solutions at Harris Corp., where he manages the company’s business with the departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Health and Human Services and other government customers. Read More »

Experts Say Healthcare.gov Could Be Hacked

Danielle Wiener-Bronner | The Wire | January 16, 2014

Cyber security experts are prepared to slam government officials over the embattled Obamacare website during today's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) hearing on its "own security concerns about healthcare.gov," citing vulnerabilities they think make the site easy to hack. Read More »

Fed Agency IT Collaboration Stumbles

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | November 13, 2013

With the federal government spending some $82 billion on IT in the 2014 fiscal year, the Obama Administration’s Office of Management and Budget has been trying to get more bang for those bucks by promoting smarter, shared IT, but there are some roadblocks to the plan, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Read More »