Massachusetts

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49 Community Health Centers Win Grants To Boost HIT Infrastructure

Bernie Monegain | Government Health IT | January 21, 2013

Neighborhood Health Plan (NHP) and Partners HealthCare will award a total of $4.25 million in a first round of grants through the Partnership for Community Health to all 49 community health centers (CHCs) that are members of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers. Read More »

60% Of Massachusetts Doctors Will Not Meet State Electronic Record Mandate

Josh Archambault | The Health Care Blog | June 8, 2013

Putting aside a lengthy discussion over the merits of and cost saving potential of EMRs for a minute, comes this gem from the land of not so well thought out policy making… Read More »

Apple Is Fighting A Secret War To Keep You From Repairing Your Phone

Damon Beres and Andy Campbell | Huffington Post | June 9, 2016

Your shiny new iPad Pro is on the fritz. The touchscreen is cracked and isn’t working properly. You could take it to an affordable local repair shop, but mom and pop may not know how to heat up the glass ​just enough to separate the LCD from the rest of the device — it’s a complicated process that involves an acute understanding of the tablet’s insides. Once they’ve cracked open the iPad, they may not even know what to do to replace each component...

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Direct Protocol May Favor Large Providers And Vendors

Scott Mace | HealthLeaders Media | December 10, 2013

A medical group's call for allowing licensed physicians, without vendor interference, to designate any recipients or senders of messages using the Direct protocol puts a spotlight on nagging EHR interoperability issues. Read More »

Doctors Given Meals by Drug Makers Prescribed More of Their Pills

Ed Silverman | STAT | June 20, 2016

Doctors who were fed meals costing even less than $20 later prescribed certain brand-name pills more often than rival medicines, according to a new analysis published on Monday of a federal database. And in most cases, costlier meals were associated with still higher prescribing rates for Medicare Part D drugs made by the same companies that provided the food. The findings, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, are likely to intensify an ongoing debate over the extent to which ties between drug makers and doctors unduly influence medical practice and the nation’s health care costs...

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Epic EHR Implementation Causes Financial Issues at MASS Hospital

Sara Heath | EHR Intelligence | March 31, 2016

A Massachusetts hospital will be laying off 95 employees as a result of financial losses following an Epic Systems EHR implementation. According to Jessica Bartlett of Boston Business Journal, Southcoast Hospital will be cutting one percent of its workforce across all three of its locations in Fall River, Wareham, and New Bedford, Massachusetts...

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Exchange Plans Hide Your True Financial Exposure

Don McCanne | Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) | November 5, 2013

[...] How much protection does health insurance offer and how can consumers know? Read More »

Halamka's Dispatch from Israel

This week Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker led a trip of clinicians, industry leaders, government officials, academics, and entrepreneurs to visit Israel (not at taxpayer expense) on a mission to establish Massachusetts as an incubator for the US growth of Israeli companies. I represented the healthcare IT innovation work we’re doing at Beth Israel Deaconess and Harvard Medical School. Israel is a remarkable place. With 8 million people in a nation the size of New Jersey situated in an unstable part of the world, Israel has no choice but to be a start up nation, creating companies that generate economic impact world wide...

Hospital CEOs Behaving Badly And The Devastating Consequences On The Middle Class

Dave Chase | Forbes | August 26, 2016

When big health insurers propose mergers, it makes for good antitrust enforcement theater to try to block them. However, if government officials want to address anti-competitive activities that have a dramatically bigger impact, they should shift their focus to local market provider M&A activity that consistently show prices increase after the deal is done. However, the most rapacious, anti-competitive practices I’ve seen in my entire career have come from hospitals–frequently from tax-exempt “nonprofits” that would make John D. Rockefeller blush with their brutal actions. The combined impact has created a middle class economic depression that has driven populist presidential campaign success, which was highlighted in a recently released Brookings study.

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How A Simple New Tool Helps Doctors Care For Patients -- After They Leave The Office

Lisa Wirthman | Forbes | May 11, 2016

We live in an increasingly connected world, but patients who receive treatment from multiple doctors and healthcare systems still face a lack of coordination in their care, which can put their health outcomes at risk. PatientPing is working to help doctors collaborate and create a more consistent experience for patients with simple technology that connects healthcare providers across facilities, systems and geographies...

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In Mass., You Can Now Get Prices For Health Care In Advance (But It’s No T.J. Maxx)

Martha Bebinger | Wbur.org | October 8, 2013

“How much will my MRI cost?” It sounds like a simple question. But before Oct. 1, it was very difficult to get an answer. Now, Massachusetts is pulling back the curtain on what has been a largely secret world of health care prices. A new state law says health insurers must be able to tell members, in advance, how much a test, treatment or surgery will cost. Read More »

Inside Big Pharma's Fight to Block Recreational Marijuana

Alfonso Serrano | The Guardian | October 10, 2016

Marijuana legalization will unleash misery on Arizona, according to a wave of television ads that started rolling out across the state last month. Replete with ominous music, the advertisements feature lawmakers and teachers who paint a bleak future for Arizona’s children if voters approve Proposition 205, a measure that would allow people aged 21 and over to possess an ounce of pot and grow up to six plants for recreational use. “Colorado schools were promised millions in new revenues” when the state approved recreational pot use, says the voiceover in one ad. Instead, schoolchildren were plagued by “marijuana edibles that look like candy”...

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Mass eHealth Institute To Award $2.35M In HIE Grants

Bernie Monegain | Government Health IT | June 24, 2013

The Massachusetts eHealth Institute at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative will give 32 collaborative projects up to $75,000 each in HIway Implementation Grants to help 80 healthcare organizations across the Commonwealth connect to the HIway, Massachusetts' statewide health information exchange. Read More »

Massachusetts Open Checkbook: Running Through the Ledger of Choices and Challenges in Open Government

Andy Oram | O'Reilly Radar | January 20, 2012

As a finance project, Open Checkbook hones in on one area of open government: how it spends. With Open Checkbook you can find out where the money goes in the Massachusetts state government, right down to particular salaries or particular payments to vendors. Read More »

Mutual self-interest leads to antitrust concerns

Paul Levy | Not Running a Hospital | August 27, 2015

We have a bright new Attorney General here in Massachusetts who has already earned her bona fides with regard to putting the brakes on economically unsupported market power expansion by the local dominant provider network.  That corporation, Partners Healthcare System (PHS), has now indicated that its primary expansion activities will be outside of the United States, but that statement hides a bit of misdirection.  Indeed, PHS remains focused on maintaining its hold on physician organizations and its overall market share here in the state.

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