Spending on entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid consumes some two-thirds of all federal spending, but new research from the University of Notre Dame shows that information technology investments in health care lead to significant spending reductions — potentially in the billions of dollars...
Medicaid
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Stimulus funding increases use of Health IT by Medicaid Hospitals
Hospitals in the Medicaid program have sharply increased their use of health information technology (IT) in response to about $12 billion in incentive payments available to them between 2011 and 2019 under the economic stimulus law, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says. Read More »
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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...
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Study Shows Electronic Health Information Exchanges Could Cut Billions in Medicare Spending
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Study: EHR-Related Safety Issues Linger Long After Implementation
Patient safety issues stemming from electronic health record systems continue long after implementation, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Modern Healthcare reports...
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Study: Medical Homes Saved North Carolina Nearly $1 Billion
The idea of medical homes — a method of coordinating medical services that relies on primary care physicians to manage patients’ care — has been around for more than 40 years. North Carolina, a leading innovator in the field, has used medical homes to improve care and lower costs in its Medicaid program since 1991. Read More »
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Surprise: Every American Will Not Have An Electronic Health Record This Year
In 2004, President George W. Bush kicked off a project designed to provide most Americans with an electronic health record in 2014. That was followed by a similar goal set by President Barack Obama in 2009. But as the end of 2014 comes nearer, these ambitious goals still have not been met...
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Take Long View On Health Reform
Americans, especially the press, seem to be obsessive regarding the Affordable Care Act — or the sobriquet "Obamacare," as it has been dubbed. At first I was slightly disheartened by this, but, given further thought, it is only natural. For far too many years, we had no cohesive "system" for our health care, and now everyone, so it seems, is looking at a real system. Read More »
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Telemedicine Clinics Make Inroads Into Primary Care
The health IT expansion of the last five years seemed to have left behind videoconferencing for remote patient visits. While it would seem a no-brainer that can potentially save time for both patient and provider, telemedicine seems to have been reserved for high-demand specialists, such as emergency stroke physicians and dermatologists who use telemedicine implementations to bring their skills to patients in rural areas. Read More »
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Telemonitoring Takes A Leap Forward
Continua Health Alliance officials on Wednesday praised the Texas Health and Human Service Commission for the approval of rules allowing Texas Medicaid to begin reimbursing for telemonitoring services and setup, effective October 1. Read More »
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Tennessee looks to VistA for new Medicaid IT system
With its DOS-era IT system approaching obsolescence, the Tennessee Department of Health is looking to build a new Medicaid IT system with the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, the VistA open source platform. Read More »
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Tension and Flaws Before Health Website Crash
On a sultry day in late August, a dozen staff members of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services gathered at the agency’s Baltimore headquarters with managers from the major contractors building HealthCare.gov to review numerous problems with President’s Obama’s online health insurance initiative. The mood was grim.
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The $100,000-Per-Year Pill: How US Health Agencies Choose Pharma Over Patients
Don Reichmuth survived prostate cancer once before, back in 2007, so his physician was concerned when tests recently revealed the cancer had returned. Reichmuth's physician prescribed a drug called enzalutamide, marketed by the Japanese company Astellas Pharma, Inc. under the brand name Xtandi. But when the physician sent the prescription to the pharmacy, the managers of Reichmuth's insurance plan sent back an immediate refusal to approve it. Reichmuth, a retired teacher who lives in Washington State, was puzzled by the logic. Then he learned the price of the Xtandi prescription: over $9,700 each month...
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The Cure
While the partisan gap in Washington is wider than it’s been at any time in living memory, the two parties do have one remarkable agenda in common. Both have proposed cuts in Medicare so drastic that they would have been politically suicidal a decade ago and may still be. Yet neither party is backing off... Read More »
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The EHR Has No Clothes
Medical students returning from rotations at Veterans’ Administration Hospitals often rave about how good VistA is – something I have never heard with any other EHR. While I have not used it in clinical care, I have examined the demonstration client available on the web and been impressed by the simple, clean interface – quite unlike most other EHRs I have used or seen. Read More »
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The GAO Report on Health Care Price Transparency
This morning during my still-dark-at-5:15 am walk, my iPod was motivating me to “get up offa that thing,” as James Brown was motivating me to “release the pressure.” Two minutes into the song, he urges, “Get into the sunshine, church is out.” Read More »
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