By Julie Appleby – Medicare plans to test new ways to pay for prescription medications given in doctors’ offices and hospital outpatient centers — moves likely to win praise from some policy experts, but opposition from facilities and practitioners.
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By John Halamka MD – Every year I walk the HIMSS floor and speak at HIMSS events with the hope that I can distill the conference sensory overload into a few key themes. In the recent past, big data, interoperability, personalized medicine, population health, and wearables were buzzwords in every booth. This year, the buzzwords were replaced by one overarching concept – providers and vendors must innovate or die.
By Mike Sutter – Several different ‘flavors’ of telehealth have developed over the years, with varying degrees of popularity and adoption. Some hospitals have telehealth systems in an emergency room, allowing ER physicians to communicate directly with physicians at another site. Other hospitals have specialty physicians who leverage telehealth visits from one health facility to another.
By Jeff Jones – Declining reimbursement is one of the greatest financial challenges physicians face today. While there isn’t much you can do to stop reimbursement cuts, you can be proactive in learning about the Merit Based Incentive Payment System and how it will impact physician reimbursement.
By Robert Rowley MD – Utilization Management (UM) is ubiquitous in healthcare. It is a system of authorizations for procedures and some referrals, for the determination of medical necessity vs. elective, cosmetic or experimental procedures, for determining bed-day allowances in hospitals, and for establishing preferred drug formularies.
As more and more healthcare organizations begin adopting some form of a value-based payment model, the findings of the 2016 HIMSS Cost Accounting Survey suggest provider organizations have a sober assessment of their capabilities in facing the challenges ahead.
lifeIMAGE, a medical image exchange platform across health care networks, providers and patients, announced it has joined CommonWell Health Alliance, an industry consortium of health information technology-focused companies that use their diverse, collective experience across the care continuum.
By Sara Rosenbaum – It’s fair to say Flint, Michigan, is facing a public health catastrophe: Thousands of city residents, including as many as 9,000 children, may have been exposed to toxic levels of lead through contaminated water. While the problem was entirely preventable, the question now is what will be done for its victims.
By Steven Posnack – Every day, across the nation, all of us in the health IT community are collectively tackling interoperability challenges. At ONC, we are focused on providing you with the chance to inspire colleagues, share experiences, and describe lessons learned when it comes to interoperability.