By John Halamka MD – As we gather together stakeholders for strategic planning of next year’s priorities, what are we hearing and what we have learned? With these observations, what are we planning to do in FY16? Over the next month, we will present a 5 page list of “bottom up” stakeholder enumerated high priority projects, categorized as core, advanced, and innovative.
Read More
By Edgar Wilson – Discussions of the benefits, potential, and future of EHRs trumpet the advance of personalized healthcare built on the intersection of patient history and genetic data. President Obama has advanced a program to integrate genomics data into both research and treatment, known as the Precision Medicine Initiative.
Registration is now open for the 5th Annual Consumer Health IT Summit hosted by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. This popular event is free and sells out each year. Register today to reserve your seat.
In July of this year, ProPublica released a searchable database of 16,827 surgeons performing one of eight elective procedures in Medicare and their individual complication rates. They focused on elective cases because they typically involve healthier patients with the best odds of a smooth recovery.
By Jim Tate – I read it almost every day. “Meaningful Use (MU) is over”. “The incentives are almost all paid out”. Everyone is acting like the entire CMS EHR Incentive Program is slipping away and with it the entire concept of MU. Better hold your horses. The death knell of MU has been overplayed.
By Dinesh Sheth – Why is it that patients are slow to take charge of their health records? Some articles suggest that management of health information should be a patient-driven initiative and the points that are used to propagate this idea are not without merit.
By John Halamka MD – Last week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration advised hospitals not to use Hospira’s Symbiq infusion system, concluding that a security vulnerability enables hackers to take remote control of the system. The agency issued the advisory some 10 days after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned of the vulnerability in the pump.
In April, Congress and President Obama approved what is commonly referred to as the doc fix bill. The bill repeals the Medicare Part B Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) reimbursement formula and replaces it with the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System or MIPS.
By Sarianne Gruber – A Virtual Clip Board Pilot Study. Patient self-service kiosks in hospitals and physician offices have helped speed up the patient intake process, collect co-pays as well as improve data quality such errors and duplication of information.