Medicare
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Beyond EHRs: Positioning Hospitals For The Pay-For-Performance Era
Fierce competition ahead. That’s what hospitals can expect in the pay-for-performance landscape that is already unfolding on the national regulatory scene. Read More »
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Big Data Saves Michigan $1 Million Each Business Day
Big Data is saving the state of Michigan $1 million each business day, while consolidating 40 data centers into three saved $19 million the first year. Read More »
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Blue Button: Driving a Patient-Centered Revolution in Health Care
A lot can happen in a year. Last October, I wrote about a promising new offering for people looking to take control of their own health and health care decisions. Known as "blue button," this simple (but rather revolutionary) technology offers individuals the ability to download their own health information with just the click of a mouse. Read More »
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Brand-Name Drugs Pushing Up US Medicare Costs: Survey
People with diabetes who are enrolled in the US federal Medicare health programme are two to three times more likely to use "expensive" brand-name drugs than diabetes patients who are treated within the Veterans Administration (VA) Healthcare System, new research shows. Read More »
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Bridging Medicine's Electronic Gap
According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 20% of seniors have five or more chronic conditions for which these patients visit an average of 13 separate providers and receive an average of 50 prescriptions. Given this statistic, how can the 13th physician safely and effectively treat a patient without the benefit of any prior medical information? Read More »
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Burgess Bill Addresses Interoperability, the Leading Health IT Issue in the US
Health care reformers around the country should be jumping up to thank Representative Michael C. Burgess (R-Texas), an MD who is working with his staff to write a bill to promote Health IT interoperability. Readers of Open Health News probably know that interoperability--in simple terms, the ability of any authorized user to read a medical record from any source--has emerged as one of the two top burning issues of health IT, the other one being the lack of usability of proprietary/lock-in electronic health records (EHRs).
Category C Liberalism
Like Ed and Kevin Drum I found Mike Konczal’s post about how the problems with healthcare.gov might reflect competing visions of liberalism interesting and wanted to expand on it. Read More »
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Changing The Structure Of Health Care Delivery Systems: To Benefit The Patient, The Providers, Or The Insurers?
In an important series of 3 articles beginning on the Sunday before the New Year, “Doctors Inc.”, Alan Bavley of the Kansas City Star looked at the increasing acquisition of physician practices by hospitals, and the impact this has on access to, quality of, and cost of health care for patients. [...] Read More »
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CMS Makes Medicare, Medicaid Data Easier For Researchers To Access
Researchers who want to study population health using the vast stores of Medicare and Medicaid data will no longer have to order it and wait for the federal government to ship them encrypted data files. Rather, they can now access the information virtually [...]. Read More »
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CMS Reopens EHR Hardship Exception Application Timeframe
Providers looking to attest to meaningful use but running into problems with their EHR versions just got a new window of time to apply for a hardship exception. Indeed, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said on Tuesday it will reopen the submission period — the new due date for hospitals and physicians hoping to avoid 2015 Medicare payment adjustments is Nov. 30, 2014...
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CMS Taps 3M for ICD-10 Coding Translation Tool
WASHINGTON – Perhaps this is to be taken as a sign that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will not, as some healthcare IT pros no doubt are still hoping, push back the compliance deadline for ICD-10. Read More »
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CMS’ Accountable Health Communities Model Selects 32 Participants to Serve as Local ‘Hubs’ Linking Clinical and Community Services
Last year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for applications for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation’s (Innovation Center) Accountable Health Communities (AHC) model. Over a five-year period, CMS will implement and test the three-track AHC model to support local communities in addressing the health-related social needs of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries by bridging the gap between clinical and community service providers...
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Coalition: Meaningful Use Stage 3 Must Focus On Care Disparities
Last week the Consumer Partnership for eHealth — a coalition of more than 50 consumer, patient and labor groups — published an action plan aimed at ensuring that Stage 3 of the meaningful use program focuses on health care disparities, Healthcare IT News reports. Read More »
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Coburn: Computerized Patient Records Will Bring on Hackers
At Wednesday's hearing, Coburn, a practicing obstetrician, referenced the exploits of Chinese cyber attackers to illustrate the vulnerability of digital versus paper information. "There are always going to be people who will go around" computer security to obtain sensitive information, he said. "Just ask our Defense Department with China right now. Read More »
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Cognosante Acquires Business Information Technology Solutions to Expand Military and Veterans Health IT Business
Cognosante and Business Information Technology Solutions (BITS) announced today that Cognosante has acquired BITS, a rapidly growing provider of IT services and solutions to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). BITS, also known as The BITS Group, has more than a decade of experience in healthcare systems, enterprise business systems, business intelligence, and data analytics in the public health sector. It is one of the prime contractors of the VA’s $22.3 billion Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology Next Generation (T4NG).
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