Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives managed to squeak out a healthcare reform victory (220-215) late Saturday evening, after ratifying the Stupak-Pitts Amendment that will prohibit abortion funding for both the public option and affordability credits.
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.
Ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, has sent a letter to 10 health IT companies requesting consumer complaint information about their health IT products.
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 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).
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.
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, led by Chairman Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., introduced legislation this week advocating for more government involvement in healthcare coverage. The bill is certain to launch a drawn-out debate over the current delivery direction of healthcare in the United States when it is introduced on the Senate floor in July.
An average of 14,000 Americans lose health coverage each day, healthcare insurance premiums grow more than three times faster than wages and physician reimbursement has declined by more than 20 percent in the past eight years. Couple these sad statistics with a demographic shift that will see an ever increasing number of U.S. citizens eligible for, and needing services from, Medicare and it becomes clear that present healthcare delivery policies are quickly becoming fiscally unsustainable.
In the first of three roundtables on healthcare delivery system reform held by the Senate Finance Committee, participants this week discussed increasing primary care physician payments by reducing payments to imaging services providers.
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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.
