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Fifteen healthcare providers and networks have received $17.4 million in contract awards funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to provide EMRs to their agency, Michael J. Astrue, commissioner of the Social Security Administration, has announced.
The greatest threat to the U.S. budget stability in the coming decade is the growth of federal spending on healthcare, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which found that spending for Medicare and Medicaid, under current law, is expected to keep growing faster than the economy, reaching 6.6 percent of the gross domestic product by 2020 and potentially reaching 10 percent by 2035.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation have estimated that the direct spending and revenue effects of enacting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act incorporating the manager’s amendment would yield a net reduction in federal deficits of $132 billion between 2010 and 2019.
The internal affairs unit of the Detroit Police Department teamed up with the Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion on Tuesday in the investigation of two recent incidents involving medical record theft that took place this fall from health programs within the city.
Written by Jeff Byers
The federal government’s current shift to sharing health information using open-source technology could potentially reduce costs and time for patients and the government, according to a panel discussion of health IT experts who gathered Oct. 30 in Washington, D.C.
The Social Security Administration is looking to award $24 million in funding to health information exchanges, regional health information organizations, general medical service providers and specialty care providers to help automate the exchange of medical records.
The Social Security Administration is seeking to expand the number of healthcare providers with which it electronically exchanges medical information in order to improve the speed and accuracy of its disability determinations. Connection software is free and downloadable.
Six federal agencies have developed an interface for the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) that they plan to make available to the public at no cost in March 2009.
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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.
