The U.S. Senate yesterday passed legislation that will delay the date of a 21.2 percent Medicare payment cut to physicians until Oct.1.
ATLANTA–At a roundtable discussion at HIMSS, David Blumenthal, MD, National Coordinator for Health IT, took a range of questions from about three dozen AMDIS members and physician IT leaders and emphasized the need for CMIOs and healthcare professionals to submit their comments to CMS as well as their congressional representatives.
Written by Jeff Byers
ATLANTA--Healthcare reform isn’t going to happen in the halls of Congress, but through improved data-driven quality throughout the U.S. healthcare system, said Susan DeVore, president and CEO of Premier, during an educational session Tuesday at HIMSS10.
The proposed Medicaid expansion is characterized as the largest public administration challenge that states have ever faced, but with adequate support from government and private philanthropies, the program has the potential to become a national leader in effective, high-quality care over the next five years, according to a recent article in Health Affairs.
A subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives last week passed the Cybersecurity Coordination and Awareness Act of 2009, which included an amendment requiring the National Institute of Standards and Technology to add health IT systems to its cybersecurity research and development.
The Federal Trade Commission has announced it is yet again delaying implementation of the Red Flags Rule until June 1, 2010.
Democrats from the U.S. House of Representatives on Oct. 30 unveiled a revised healthcare reform proposal—H.R. 3692, the Affordable Health Care for America Act—which the Congressional Budget Office estimated carries an $894 billion price tag for the federal government.
The Senate Finance Committee voted today in favor of its version of proposed healthcare reform legislation in a 14-9 vote, including the approval of Olympia Snowe, R.-Me.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $538,595 to the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, led by Indiana University, to support a two-year project titled, "Protecting Privacy in Health Research."
The recession has put more people on Medicaid and sharply increased state spending on the program, forcing state officials to cut costs even with help coming from the federal government through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
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A new policy statement from the American Heart Association (AHA) advocates that healthcare facilities use high-quality video conferencing systems to connect expert neurologists for rapid, remote examination and treatment of patients undergoing suspected strokes. Commentary, published in the July 1 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, notes that reimbursement obstacles and the necessity of establishing "stroke systems of care" for effective assessment and treatment remain.
A New England Journal of Medicine report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends 100 health topics that should get priority attention and funding from a new national research effort to identify which healthcare services work best. The article also spelled out resources needed to ensure that this comparative effectiveness research initiative will be a sustained effort with a continuous process for updating priorities and that the results are put into clinical practice.
Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives unveiled their healthcare reform legislation Friday, calling for a 75 percent increase in the equipment utilization rate and an increase of 25 to 50 percent in the reduction of the technical component of imaging for multiple procedures.
President Barack Obama Sunday released plans to cut in half the prescription drug expenses of Medicare Part D beneficiaries who have reached the coverage gap (doughnut hole) in their prescription benefit. Simultaneously, pharmaceutical companies have agreed to foot the bill for $80 billion in Medicare drugs over the next decade for this population.
Data released by the Radiology Business Management Association (RBMA) this week demonstrated that the use rate of diagnostic imaging equipment in an outpatient setting is approximately one half the amount claimed by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) and the Administration of President Barack Obama.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., introduced legislation to establish a private, nonprofit corporation that will research and compare clinical outcomes of alternative therapies and health strategies.
Healthcare reform cannot survive on expanding coverage alone; it requires promoting best practices to fix what is broken, wrote President Barack Obama in a letter sent June 2 to Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Max Baucus, D-Mont.,--the two key stakeholders who have been at odds over the payor component of the administration's healthcare reform plan.
Even though federal law requires it, nearly half of all U.S. hospitals fail to report to the National Practitioner Data Bank when a physician's admitting privileges have been revoked or restricted for more than 30 days, according to a report from consumer watchdog group Public Citizen.
A report from UnitedHealth Group's Center for Health Reform and Modernization found that the U.S. government could save $540 billion in healthcare costs over the next decade if existing programs that have improved healthcare quality and slowed medical spending are applied more broadly.
Although federal agencies reported increased compliance in implementing key information security control activities for fiscal year 2008, inspectors general are still noting shortcomings with implementation of information security requirements, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
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The use of health IT to reduce rehospitalizations will be welcome but also disruptive, said Stephen Jencks, an independent consultant in healthcare safety during a Feb. 24 webinar on the potential use of health IT to mitigate rehospitalizations, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
During the Health IT Standards Committee meeting on Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C., the Clinical Operations Workgroup sought to gather comments on proposed recommendations on implementation specifications for content exchange, vocabulary and code set standards for the Interim Final Rule of meaningful use.
The state of Maine currently has the largest operating statewide exchange in the country in relation to population. Although Devore Culver, Executive Director of Maine’s HealthInfoNet, expects that distinction to change in the months ahead, the state’s HIE is entering the final months of its demonstration phase, and is slated to move in to its full statewide implementation in the second half of 2010. Culver, who is former CIO of Eastern Maine Health Care, recently spoke with CMIO about the progress HealthInfoNet has made.
In 2006, the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), a branch of the FDA, began examining the number of medical device reports they received. Over the past two years, the number of submitted reports has increased, sparking a demand for the CDRH to make a move to electronic reporting.
A new hospital breaking ground usually isn’t breaking news. But the vision of patient care at one new facility, tentatively named Palomar Medical Center West (PMC West), is currently illegal under California state law.
