It has become an article of faith in some health policy circles over the past 20 years that the "solution" for our health care system's woes is to make us better health care consumers -- the so-called consumer-driven movement. After all, we've known for at least forty years that increased cost-sharing does influence how much health care we consume, so, in theory, higher deductibles and coinsurance, plus better cost/quality information, should give us the right incentives to shop. Most health care professionals are equally convinced patients aren't, and are never going to be, "consumers" in any meaningful sense. Health care is too scary, relies on too much specialized information, and is too often "consumed" at times when we are least able to make thoughtful decisions...
quality of care
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Open Source EHR Company Achieves 48 Percent Revenue Growth in 2016
Medsphere Systems Corporation, the leading provider of affordable and interoperable healthcare information technology (IT) solutions and services, is welcoming the new year with excitement and anticipation following a busy and historic 2016. Significant recent achievements include an expansion of company products and services as well as a record number of new clients and unprecedented revenue growth. The company’s ongoing efforts to make affordable healthcare IT more widely available have resulted in specific indicators from the previous calendar year of growth and success...
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OpenNotes Introduces Advisory Board
OpenNotes is pleased to announce that ten extraordinary advocates for health care quality and improvement are the founding members of the OpenNotes Advisory Board. OpenNotes is a national movement that urges doctors, nurses and other health care providers to share the notes they write with the patients they care for...
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Patients Are Not Consumers...But Who Is?
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Philippines National Telehealth Center Leverages Innovative Open Solutions to Provide Equitable Access to Quality Healthcare
OpenGov had the opportunity to speak to Dr. Portia Grace Fernandez-Marcelo, Director of the UP (University of Philippines) Manila-National Telehealth Center (NTHC) about using ICT to provide equitable access to quality healthcare for all, specially in isolated and disadvantaged communities. NTHC is one of the pioneers in the Philippines developing cost-effective ICT tools and innovations for improving healthcare and deploying solutions in communities where they are required most urgently...
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Physician Burnout Is A Public Health Crisis: A Message To Our Fellow Health Care CEOs
The Quadruple Aim recognizes that a healthy, energized, engaged, and resilient physician workforce is essential to achieving national health goals of higher quality, more affordable care and better health for the populations we serve. Yet in a recent study of U.S. physicians, more than half reported experiencing at least one symptom of burnout—a substantial increase over previous years—indicating that burnout among physicians is becoming a national health crisis. Leadership is needed to address the root causes of this problem and reposition the health care workforce for the future. The authors of this paper—the CEOs of our respective institutions—are committing to do just that...
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Pitching Medicaid IT in Silicon Valley
Earlier this year, I announced a new effort to connect new, innovative companies and their investors to the state Medicaid program IT space. Since this announcement, I have been encouraged by the initial interest from companies that may not have otherwise ever thought about participating in this important health insurance program that covers more than 72 million Americans. That’s why I’m in Silicon Valley today to participate in a forum on bringing technological advances to Medicaid. The forum is convening states, innovative tech companies, and federal Medicaid officials on how to collaborate to improve the delivery of Medicaid health coverage in states.
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Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Examine the Impact of OpenNotes on Patient Safety
Researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) are homing in on the potential benefits of allowing patients access to the notes their clinicians write after a visit. An article published in the August edition of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety suggests that this kind of patient engagement has the power to improve safety and quality of care. The practice of sharing visit notes more readily began with the OpenNotes study in 2010. More than 100 primary care doctors at three hospitals invited 20,000 of their patients to read their visit notes through a secure, patient website.
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Roger Baker: Why VA's Electronic Health Record Mega-Project is Failing
The Department of Veterans Affairs currently is reassessing its $16 billion-plus Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) effort. Faced with productivity and patient safety issues in its initial pilot site, further rollouts of the EHRM have been paused by VA Secretary Denis McDonough. And while VA has not yet announced the details of the actions it will take to correct the EHRM program, those actions must include addressing the program's fundamental problems, not just the readily apparent quality and productivity problems surfaced at the pilot site. Read More »
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South Africa’s Areta Health Selects Medsphere Healthcare IT Solutions
Medsphere Systems Corporation, the leading provider of affordable and interoperable healthcare information technology (IT) solutions and services, today announced that the company has reached an agreement with South Africa’s Areta Health for comprehensive support of the organization’s hospital network. The contract covers Areta Health’s Specialist Day Hospital (SDH) system spread throughout South Africa. The hospitals, in turn, anchor an integrated health network with remote clinics and in-home monitoring that allow patients to heal at home without sacrificing attentive care...
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The Challenge of Saving Lives with 'Big Data'
Every day, more data about our lives is being generated than ever before. When it comes to saving lives, the bigger the data the better - but what to do with it all? Ninety per cent of the data in the world has been created in the past two years alone, experts estimate - and the reason for that is technological innovation. The internet, mobile phones, cameras, sensors, bank cards and social media are just some of the items responsible for the massive volume of "big data" that is currently amassed every single second...
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The Rise of 'Technology-Enabled' Clinical Research Companies
Eric Hodgins, senior vice president, research and development technology solutions at QuintilesIMS, told us there are a number of dynamics “significantly transforming the industry and driving an increase in technology-enabled clinical research.” Notably, there are two macro trends: the pace of innovation in scientific research and the explosion of technological advancements...
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Type & Click Tasks Drain Half the Primary Care Workday
Primary care physicians spend more than half of their workday at a computer screen performing data entry and other tasks with electronic medical records (EHRs), according to new research from experts at the University of Wisconsin and the American Medical Association (AMA). Based on data from EHR event logs and confirmed by direct observation data, researchers found that during a typical 11.4-hour workday, primary care physicians spent nearly six hours on data entry and other tasks with EHR systems during and after clinical hours. The study was published today in the Annals of Family Medicine...
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VA Innovator Network To Expand, Less Than 1 Year In
A program designed to creatively solve problems within the Veterans Affairs Department is already growing. VA's Innovators Network is a broad set of initiatives, including financial grants and entrepreneurship training, which encourage employees to invent solutions to problems they witness internally. It started out at eight pilot sites in November, but could soon expand to about a dozen more this year, Andrea Ippolito, head of the Innovators Network, said during an event in Washington onThursday...
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Vision for a Principled Redesign of Health Information Technology
The mission for Family Medicine for America’s Health (FMAHealth) is to help people live healthier. To support this, a goal of the FMAHealth Technology Tactic Team is to envision a future state that involves the principled redesign and implementation of health information technology (IT) that optimally supports the health and health care of the US populace. Compared to other nations, the US health care system offers higher cost, lower quality health care to its people...
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What You Don't Know About Your Doctor Could Hurt You
Thousands of doctors across the U.S. are on medical probation for reasons including drug abuse, sexual misconduct, and making careless—sometimes deadly—mistakes. But they're still out there practicing. And good luck figuring out who they are. The state medical board's report on Leonard Kurian, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Southern California, tells in stark clinical detail what it says happened to several patients in his care. And it's not easy to read...
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