By Julie Rovner – Medical students cram a lot of basic science and medicine into their first two years of training. But most learn next to nothing about the intricacies of the health care system they are soon to enter. That’s something the medical school at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., is trying to remedy.
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By John Halamka MD – Meaningful Use Stage 2 has a requirement that I’ve always considered to be the “cart before the horse” – patients must be able to View/Download/Transmit their data. Viewing is great – we’ve done that at BIDMC since 1999 for all patients and all data.
By Deanne Kasim – With the increase in specialty drugs, innovative diagnostic testing, and precision medicine, it is expected that the use of the Prior Authorization will only increase with health insurance companies. Of course I have heard from many re: the (theoretical) fact that as the use of value-based provider reimbursement matures, there will be less and less need for a PA process.
By Roger Davis – “We are deadly serious about interoperability.” – Andy Slavitt, Acting Administrator of the CMS at the J. P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco in January 2016. For those of us in the healthcare vendor community, that defining statement sets the tone for the future interaction between organizations.
By Patrick Conway MD – Last year, a bipartisan Congressional majority passed the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, or MACRA. We have worked in the same spirit as the law’s model of partnership and progress as we implement policies to improve the health and well-being of Americans.
By Susan Jaffe – Despite interventions by Medicare officials, the number of appeals from health care providers and patients challenging denied claims continues to spiral, increasing the backlog of cases and delaying many decisions well beyond the timeframes set by law, according to a government study released on June 9th.
By Matt Patterson MD – In May, The Joint Commission announced that it was changing its five-year-old ban on texting, stating that effective immediately health care organizations may now allow orders to be transmitted via text message. The topic of ‘secure messaging’ has long been a polarizing topic within the health care industry.
By William Hersh – Raising a number of caveats about the enthusiasm for leveraging the growing volume of patient data in EHRs and other clinical information systems for so-called re-use of secondary use, such as clinical research, quality improvement, and public health.
By Ashish Jha – Get a group of health policy experts together and you’ll find one area of near universal agreement: we need more transparency in healthcare. The notion behind transparency is straightforward; greater availability of data on provider performance helps consumers make better choices and motivates providers to improve.