public health
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Halamka on MU3 Regs: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
On Friday March 20, CMS released the Electronic Health Record Incentive Program-Stage 3 and ONC released the 2015 Edition Health Information Technology (Health IT) Certification Criteria, 2015 Edition Base Electronic Health Record (EHR) Definition, and ONC Health IT Certification Program Modifications. Perhaps the most important statement in the entire 700+ pages is the following from the CMS rule: "Stage 3 of meaningful use is expected to be the final stage and would incorporate portions of the prior stages into its requirements."
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Halamka Summarizes the CMS Meaningful Use Final Rule
I’ve been asked to summarize the 752 page CMS Meaningful Use Final Rule...Between the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and the publication of the CMS Final Rule, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) passed to include sunsetting the Meaningful Use payment adjustment for professionals at the end of 2018. Also, MACRA requires the establishment of a Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) which would incorporate Meaningful Use. The comment period will be used in an attempt to align the Meaningful Use program and the MIPS program...Stage 3 is more controversial and I will focus on that.
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Halamka's Report on The April 2015 HIT Standards Committee Meeting
The April 2015 HITSC meeting focused on the Certification Rule NPRM and a comprehensive review of the Federal Interoperability Roadmap. I suggested that a guiding principle for the committee’s work is to emphasize the enablers in the proposals while reducing those aspects that create substantial burden/slow innovation. As a federal advisory committee our job is to temper regulatory ambition with operational reality.
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Half Of Taxpayer Funded Research Will Soon Be Available To The Public
Proponents of the open access model for academic research notched a huge victory Thursday night when Congress passed a budget that will make about half of taxpayer-funded research available to the public. Read More »
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Has the Internet Become an Epidemic?
It seems obvious that internet companies would calibrate their apps to keep you using them as often and as long as possible. But did you realize that these companies have become so good that your relationship with the internet has crossed from an affection to an addiction? Scientists across the globe have demonstrated that shifting the internet from our computers to our phones has created an epidemic worse than the one created by smoking, albeit attacking our minds instead of our lungs...
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Health Information Exchange Resist Cures (Part 2)
The previous section of this paper introduced problems found in HIE by two reports: one from the Office of the National Coordinator and another from experts at the Oregon Health & Science University. Tracing the causes of these problems is necessarily somewhat speculative, but the research helps to confirm impressions I have built up over the years. The ONC noted that developing HIE is very resource intensive, and not yet sustainable. (p. 6) I attribute these problems to the persistence of the old-fashioned, heavyweight model of bureaucratic, geographically limited organizations hooking together clinicians. (If you go to another state, better carry your medical records with you.) Evidence of their continued drag on the field appeared in the report...
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Health Officials Could Identify & Act On Crises Earlier With New Draper Biosurveillance Tool
A cloud computing service under development at Draper Laboratory could provide insights that enable public health preparedness and response officials to more quickly limit the severity of emerging public health crises, whether due to bioterrorism, novel influenza pandemics, or other disease outbreaks... Read More »
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Health Organizations Implore Congress to Fund Public Health Surveillance Systems
HLN Consulting joined more than eighty organizations, institutions, and companies in imploring Congress to fund public health surveillance systems. The appropriations request letters – one to the House and one to the Senate – seek one billion in funding over ten years (and $100 million in FY 2020) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This funding would allow CDC, state, local, tribal, and territorial health departments to move from sluggish, manual, paper-based data collection to seamless, automated, interoperable IT systems and to recruit and retain skilled data scientists to use them.
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Health Records Of Every NHS Patient To Be Shared In Vast Database
The health records of everyone in the NHS will be pooled in a vast database which can be accessed by researchers and pharmaceutical companies. But campaigners warn it could breach privacy. Read More »
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HealthMap Co-Founder And Prominent Epidemiologist Dr. John Brownstein To Deliver Keynote At 2014 mHealth Summit Focused On Ebola Outbreak, Epidemics And Public Health Surveillance
The mHealth Summit today announced that John Brownstein, PhD...Co-Founder of HealthMap, will deliver a keynote address at the 6th annual Summit on December 10...HealthMap is a global leader in using online informal sources for disease outbreak monitoring and real-time surveillance of emerging public health threats...The HealthMap software spotted the West African Ebola epidemic nine days before the World Health Organization (WHO) announced it, triggering a global response. Read More »
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HealthMap Tracks Ebola’s Footprints Online, Preparing For The Next Big Outbreak
Since March, a group of data-savvy epidemiologists at Boston Children’s Hospital have watched Ebola slowly spread through West Africa, ominously lighting up their dials first as a trickle, then a torrent of mentions on social media and online news reports. The group, HealthMap, has been steadily ahead of the curve tracking this year’s outbreak. One day, they hope to be a step ahead of the next big disease...
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HHS Funds Ventilators For Public Health Emergencies
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services revealed its intentions to fund the development of portable ventilators that could be used in public health emergencies. The new ventilator will be developed under a three year, $13.8 million contract with Philips Respironics of Murrysville, Pennsylvania...
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HHS Offers $665M To Spark Innovation
The government has divvied up more than $665 million to states for designing and testing ways to improve healthcare quality, accessibility and affordability. The awards will go to 28 states, three territories and the District of Columbia...
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HHS Offers Hurricane Guidance to Healthcare Facilities
With Florida still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Irma, a federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services has issued draft guidance to help healthcare facilities with disaster planning and recovery for major hurricanes. Based on lessons learned from Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, Harvey and others, the document—from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response—provides an overview of the “potential significant public health and medical response and recovery needs facing hurricane- and severe storm-affected areas.” Among the topics in the draft are those covering health information management...
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HHS’ Cyber Threat Center Comes Out of Beta Soon
The Health and Human Services Department’s nascent cybersecurity center will soon reach initial operating capability to help share threat information with a sector constantly under attack and often short of cyber personnel of its own. Based on the Homeland Security Department's National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, the Healthcare Cybersecurity Communications and Integration Center will share health-care specific threats information with other agencies and the private sector...
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