By William A. Hyman – A recent press release and report from AHRQ asserts that 87,000 lives and nearly $20 billion in costs have been saved as a result of safety improvements. This reduction in hospital-aquired conditions (HAC) is said to be “thanks in part to provisions of the Affordable Care Act”, and Medicare incentives.
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By Morris Panner – Mobile devices have transformed the way we communicate and conduct business. Some basic types of mobile healthcare (mHealth) solutions are already widely in use, and about 70% of Americans monitor health and wellness using apps like step and calorie counters.
This week’s HIE rundown includes: Validic and higi partner to advance remote patient monitoring and patient wellness initiatives, Carequality adds new members to public-private collaborative, & Stanford Children’s Health and other healthcare leaders turn to next-generation medical image management platform from DICOM Grid.
By Steve Spearman – Cyber security news site Dark Reading recently posted an article outlining data breaches from the last decade. They reported that the healthcare industry has had more security breaches than any other industry in the past ten years.
By Jonathon Dreyer – As a kid, whenever I couldn’t reach something, I used to pull my sweatshirt over my hands and extend my arms forcefully, triumphantly exclaiming “Go-go Gadget arms!” Little did I know at the time that those innovations and neat devices from Inspector Gadget would contain usability lessons that apply to current challenges in health IT.
By Dr. Gary Bevill & William Taunton – Initially a four-doctor practice, SAMA Healthcare Services is breaking ground in coordinated, patient-centered health care in rural El Dorado, Arkansas. Although SAMA doctors had known early on that this is how they wanted to practice medicine, they could do only so much until they got support from the Comprehensive Primary Care (CPC) initiative of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation, an Affordable Care Act program. Dr. Gary Bevill and SAMA patient William Taunton recently talked about the initiative.
By Matt Fisher – A Shakespearean Tangle: The current state of medical data is very complicated. The amount of medical data being created is exploding all of the time. The explosion is being facilitated by the always increasing number of ways of creating it and a broadening array of people or entities how want access to it.
By D’Arcy Gue – On the face of it, the use of computers to order prescriptions seems like a no-brainer. Who, after all, is capable of reading a physician’s handwriting? But if we set aside clichés, there is still this question: Does e-prescribing provide distinct benefits over handwritten patient prescriptions? With acknowledgement of some drawbacks, it would seem the scales tip decidedly toward e-prescribing as a net positive.
By Matt Fisher – The annual OIG Work Plan was published on November 2nd. The Work Plan each year identifies what the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services will review and provides insight into what the OIG contemplates as risk areas.