Medicare
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Addressing Chronic Illness Can Help Cure the U.S. Budget Deficit
Chronic illness represents $3 of every $4 of annual health spending in the U.S. That’s about $1.5 trillion. Living Well With Chronic Illness, a report from The Institute of Medicine (IOM), issues a “call for public health action” to address chronic illness through...
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Advice To The Next National Coordinator
Over the next few months, Jacob Reider will serve as the interim National Coordinator for Healthcare IT while the search continues for Farzad Mostashari's permanent replacement. Read More »
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AirStrip, Humetrix and others advise Congress on FDA, FTC, HIPAA
At a congressional hearing on mobile medical apps today, experts from different sectors of the industry weighed in on the ways they think federal regulation needs to change to create a robust digital health industry while still protecting the safety and wellbeing of patients. The conversation spanned various regulatory bodies and federal programs including HIPAA, the FDA, the FTC, and Medicare. “The regulatory framework for most of these apps is complicated and in some cases troubling,” Nicolas Terry, a law professor at Indiana University said in his prepared testimony. “Here, the oversimplified binary of regulation versus innovation is a poor frame...
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American Indian Exceptionalism
Max Baucus' bill makes you pay a fine if you don't have health insurance—unless you're American Indian. Read More »
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An End To Medical-Billing Secrecy?
Our hospital bill is about to get a thorough examination. [...] Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius released an enormous data file on May 8 that reveals the list—or “chargemaster”—prices of all hospitals across the country for the 100 most common inpatient treatment services in 2011. Read More »
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Another Letter To Washington, From A Physician On The Front Lines.
Due to the tremendous popularity of Dr. Moeller’s original post as well as some of the critiques and questions it raised, Dr. Moeller has written this follow-up post in response. Read More »
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Apixio Illuminates The Pain of Recording Patient Risk Factors (Part 2)
The previous section of this article introduced Apixio’s analytics for payers in the Medicare Advantage program. Now we’ll step through how Apixio extracts relevant diagnostic data. Providers usually submit SOAP notes to the Apixio web site in the form of PDFs. This comes to me as a surprise, after hearing about the extravagant efforts that have gone into new CCDs and other formats such as the Blue Button project launched by the VA. Normally provided in an XML format, these documents claim to adhere to standards and offer a relatively gentle face to a computer program. In contrast, a PDF is one of the most challenging formats to parse: words and other characters are reduced to graphical symbols, while layout bears little relation to the human meaning of the data...
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Are We Getting Enough Bang For Our Healthcare Buck? Hardly.
The U.S. healthcare system costs each of us about twice as much as those in other wealthy countries. Are we getting our money’s worth? Not by a long shot...
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Assisting California Wildfires Victims Retrieve their Medical Histories
The horrific California wildfires which have devasted entire communities, caused loss of life and displaced tens of thousands of Californians is touching all of us. At Humetrix our public health driven mission has led us to develop tools for individuals to help be prepared and be safe during emergencies, we want to step in and help those with ongoing health care needs, while their physician offices or hospital-based care have now been destroyed. With this destruction, the health records of thousands of fire victims with chronic conditions, or on daily medications and special needs are now gone, leaving many with the incapacity to fully recollect their important medical history when seeking care away from what was home.
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At CES, Humetrix Shows its e-Prescribed Digital Health Technology to Transform Healthcare in the Hands of Consumers
At CES, Humetrix will demo its suite of mobile health platforms that put consumers around the world in control of their own care. By offering actionable mobile applications that address the complexity of medical care, delivered in multiple settings, and which needs to be personalized, Humetrix places decision-making tools in consumers’ own hands and on their own devices, where they can use it.
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Athenahealth Reveals Best, Worst Payers
The annual PayerView Report, from health IT company athenahealth, released today, reveals the healthcare payer that has the best relationship with providers and the one that has the most problems...
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Axial Exchange And Becker’s Hospital Review Partner To Launch The First-Ever National Patient Engagement Index (PEI)
Axial Exchange, Inc., a pioneer in using mobile applications to deepen the patient’s role in improving outcomes, today announced that it has partnered with Becker’s Hospital Review, a leading healthcare trade publication, to conduct the first National Patient Engagement Index (PEI) in 2014. Read More »
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Baby Birth Costs Vary 10-Fold In Hospitals, Study Finds
The cost of giving birth at a hospital can vary by tens of thousands of dollars, a price range that is “largely random” and unexplainable by market factors, a California study found. Read More »
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Berwick's Resignation a Signal of a Faulty Political System
It came as a surprise to no one that Donald Berwick, MD, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid, would not be carrying on in the position once his term ended on Dec. 31, but many were surprised last week when he announced his resignation would be effective on Dec. 2. Read More »
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Better Coordination Of Care Could Save $1.5 Billion Annually
Improving the coordination of care for elderly patients with chronic diseases reduces costs, use of health services and complications, according to a new RAND Corporation study published online in JAMA Internal Medicine.
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