health information technology (HIT)

Investing in the future of Medicaid is one of the single biggest opportunities in the health care sector...Overall, CMS’ annual investment in state Medicaid Information Technology (IT) is more than $5 billion, enabling states to modernize their Medicaid IT systems to best meet their program, providers’ and beneficiaries’ needs. CMS and states are prepared to invest in innovative solutions. For this investment, we expect significant advances. Our new regulations require that states evolve their legacy Medicaid IT systems to leverage reusable solutions, and to practice industry-proven IT methods such as use of modularity, reuse, shared services (including Software-as-a-Service) by fundamentally shifting the financial incentives away from custom development. This opens opportunity to smaller vendors to develop focused solutions for use across multiple states or to introduce solutions from comparable sectors such as commercial insurance or large provider systems.

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With some healthcare providers now into their second year of meaningful use reporting, Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record payments were estimated at $12.3 billion paid to a total of 219,000 physicians and hospitals through February since the program’s inception. Read More »

The Defense Health Agency's electronic health record for combat troops--costing 2,233 percent more than originally estimated--topped the list of Defense information systems projects gone off track in a report from the Government Accountability Office.  Cost for the system, the Theater Medical Information Program - Joint (TMIP-J), Increment 2, soared from $67.7 million in November 2002 to $1.58 billion by December 2013.

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Deep in the back offices of Silicon Valley startups and stalwarts, you won’t commonly encounter phrases like "automotive IT" or "plastic injection molding IT" – yet all through the healthcare industry, such vague-almost-to-the-point-of-confusing terms pepper the conversation. Read More »

Moving toward  post-acute care and Apple users, the CommonWell Health Alliance added two new members.  Lawrenceville, Ga.-based Brightree is CommonWell's first exclusively post-acute vendor, with a sizable footprint in fast-growing home health sector. Officials said its addition will offer new opportunities to extend nteroperability to in-home care.

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CommonWell Health Alliance has launched a new program that is expected to give patients the capability of more easily accessing their health records. The initiative will begin with six electronic health record vendors: Aprima Medical Software, athenahealth, Cerner, Evident, Modernizing Medicine and RelayHealth. Two standalone patient portal vendors, Integrated Data Services and MediPortal, will offer an app enabling patients to access their records by year-end, says Jitin Asnaani...

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