American Medical Association (AMA)

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Epic and Other EHR Vendors Caught in Dilemmas by APIs (Part 1 of 2)

Andy Oram | EMR and HIPAA | March 15, 2017

The HITECH act of 2009 (part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) gave an unprecedented boost to an obscure corner of the IT industry that produced electronic health records. For the next eight years they were given the opportunity to bring health care into the 21st century and implement common-sense reforms in data sharing and analytics. They largely squandered this opportunity, amassing hundreds of millions of dollars while watching health care costs ascend into the stratosphere, and preening themselves over modest improvements in their poorly functioning systems...

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Feds Move Into Digital Medicine, Face Doctor Backlash

Laura Ungar and Jayne O'Donnell | USA TODAY | February 1, 2015

"Physicians passionately despise their electronic health records," says Lexington, Ky., emergency physician Steven Stack, the American Medical Association's president-elect. "We use technology quickly when it works … Electronic health records don't work right now."

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Forget Obamacare: Vermont Wants To Bring Single Payer To America

Sarah Kliff | Vox | April 9, 2014

"If Vermont gets single-payer health care right, which I believe we will, other states will follow," Vermont Gov. Shumlin predicted in a recent interview. "If we screw it up, it will set back this effort for a long time.

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Google Proved That AI Can Reshape Medicine

David Gershgorn | Quartz | November 30, 2016

A doctor’s work isn’t all done in examination rooms. Many specialists spend lots of time alone with the lights out, examining photographs that reveal their patients’ internal workings. That might soon change. A paper by Google published in the Journal of the American Medical Association details an algorithm that can detect when someone has developed blindness as a result of diabetes, trained and tested by board-certified ophthalmologists. It shows algorithms can, at least in the case of this particular affliction, make a diagnosis with an accuracy on-par with medical professionals...

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Halamaka Takes a Deep Dive on the MACRA NPRM

As promised last week, I’ve read and taken detailed notes on the entire 962 page MACRA notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) so that you will not have to. Although this post is long, it is better than the 20 hours of reading I had to do! Here is everything you need to know from an IT perspective about the MACRA NPRM...What is the MACRA NPRM trying to achieve with regard to healthcare IT? The MACRA NPRM proposes to consolidate components of three existing programs, the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), the Physician Value-based Payment Modifier (VM), and the Medicare Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program for eligible professionals (EPs), creating a single set of reporting requirements. The rule would sunset payment adjustments under the current PQRS, VM, and the Medicare EHR Incentive Program for eligible professionals...

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Halamka on Why he Disagrees with the "Snake Oil" Analogy

Earlier this week, the American Medical Association CEO called digital healthcare products modern-day "snake oil." As a provider and a technologist, I think we need a deeper dive to understand the issues, avoiding the kind of hyperbole that’s so common in politics today. Paul B. Batalden, MD, Senior Fellow, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), once said “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets”. Let’s take a brief look at the history of national healthcare IT efforts from 2004-2016 to understand how we’ve achieved exactly the results we designed.

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Healthcare Associations Congratulate Obama, Press Issues For Next Term

Rene Letourneau | Government Health IT | November 8, 2012

Healthcare industry stakeholders reacted quickly to President Barack Obama’s victory over Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Here are some excerpts of comments Healthcare Finance News has received: Read More »

Healthcare's Death Star Thinking vs. Human Centered Design

I missed it when it first came out, but a providential tweet from the always perceptive Steve Downs tipped me to a most interesting article from Jennifer Pahlka with the wonderful title “Death Star Thinking and Government Reform.” The article is not directly related to healthcare, although it does include healthcare examples, but Ms. Pahlka’s central point very much applies to most efforts to reform healthcare: The need to believe that a Death Star-style solution is at hand — that we have analyzed the plans and found the single point of failure — runs deep in our culture.

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Heavyweights Lead Charge For More Time On EHR Meaningful Use

Joseph Conn | Modern Publication | September 6, 2014

A host of heavyweight healthcare organizations is calling for HHS to back off of the requirement to meet meaningful-use criteria for all of 2015 for the federally funded electronic health-record incentive payment program, insisting that the future of the program is at stake...

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How Blockchain Can Give Physicians the Power of Information

Irene Tien | Emergency Medicine | October 11, 2018

One of the more progressive concepts to help physicians to develop a collective voice is the use of blockchain technology. HPEC is a start-up created by Emergency Medicine physician Leah Houston, MD to harness the power of blockchain to decentralize ownership of information (in this case, your professional information as a physician) and create a virtual physician community. No more updating your credentials with a third-party every year (think CAHQ) so that that information can then be sold to future employers or hospitals looking to credential you.

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How Did Health Care Get to Be Such a Mess?

Christy Ford Chapin | The New York Times | June 19, 2017

The problem with American health care is not the care. It’s the insurance. Both parties have stumbled to enact comprehensive health care reform because they insist on patching up a rickety, malfunctioning model. The insurance company model drives up prices and fragments care. Rather than rejecting this jerry-built structure, the Democrats’ Obamacare legislation simply added a cracked support beam or two. The Republican bill will knock those out to focus on spackling other dilapidated parts of the system...

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How EHRs Tied Up Physician Time in 2015

Troy Parks | AMA Wire | December 11, 2015

As the year draws to a close, we’re taking a look at five of the topics that struck a special chord with the medical community throughout 2015. Burdensome regulations and technology have led physicians to spend considerable time struggling with their electronic health records (EHR). Fortunately, policymakers and health IT developers are starting to take note...

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In-Depth: All the News from the Connected Health Conference 2016

Staff Writer | Mobi Health News | December 16, 2016

This week, the Connected Health Conference in National Harbor, Maryland brought together stakeholders and thought leaders in digital and connected health. MobiHealthNews covered the two-day event this week -- links to our coverage from Monday and Tuesday are at the bottom of this roundup... In a panel moderated by Dr. Joe Kvedar, the VP of Connected Health at Partner’s Healthcare, Alden Doerner Rinaldi, medical director at Mount Auburn Hospital and Ronan Wisdom, global lead for connected health at Accenture, talked about how the role of digital tools is changing in healthcare...

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Innovators vs. The Establishment Extends to Digital Health

Neil Versel | MedCity News | May 18, 2016

Just like in the presidential campaign, a new guard is rising up against the establishment in digital health — and healthcare in general. Entrenched interests, of course, are fighting back any way they can to retain their grip on the industry. At the American Telemedicine Association annual conference in Minneapolis this week, lots of telehealth and digital health companies, as always, were showing off their wares in the exhibit hall. Presenters in the 100 or so breakout sessions discussed practical applications of their technology...

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Is an EHR backlash brewing?

Tom Sullivan | Government Health IT | February 19, 2013

#EHRbacklash was born as EHRs, vendors, and the meaningful use incentive program are under perhaps as much fire as they’ve faced yet. On Tuesday, in fact, Black Book Rankings managing partner Doug Brown essentially struck at all three by saying that “meaningful use incentives created an artificial market for dozens of immature EHR products,” a scenario that may trigger “the year of the great EHR switch,” in 2013. Read More »