By Matt Fisher – A patient contacts their physician’s office and asks for a copy of their medical record. The expected response would seem to be obvious. Sure, we will copy the record and send it to your shortly. Not only will the record be sent, but it will be sent in an easily accessible format and exactly as requested.
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By Susan Jaffe – Looking for ways to save money and improve care, Medicare officials are returning to an old-fashioned idea: house calls. But the experiment, called Independence at Home, is more than a nostalgic throwback to the way medicine was practiced decades ago when the doctor arrived at the patient’s door carrying a big black bag.
By Elise Sweeney Anthony & Steven Posnack – Health IT developers must now comply with enhanced transparency requirements associated with their products. It is applicable to the 2014 Edition, as well as newly issued 2015 Edition of standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria.
By Sara Rosenbaum – The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services introduced a final Medicaid managed care rule establishing a new regulatory framework for the next generation of managed care. A policy watershed, the rule ultimately will touch the lives of tens of millions of low-income children and adults, and individuals with disabilities.
By Mark Schneider – According to a survey by Hospital and Health Networks magazine, only 39% of respondents integrate clinical data so it is accessible, searchable, and reportable across the care community. That’s up from 33% in 2014 but far short of the type of connectivity needed to ensure quality patient outcomes.
By Patrick Conway MD – We know that it is possible to improve national patient safety performance resulting in millions of people avoiding infections and adverse health events. A report released by the AHRQ showed an unprecedented 39% reduction in preventable patient harm in U.S. hospitals compared to the 2010 baseline.
By Shingai Samudzi – As the healthcare tech market matures, the focus of consumer oriented weight management products will shift from merely data gathering and generic weight loss plans to applied analytics for building successful personalized plans for change resistant users.
By William Hyman – Computer Decision Support usually takes the form of software generated patient specific recommendations based on patient attributes in the EMR. A recent study takes a somewhat different approach by using EMR data to identify hospital patients who are at risk of death, but offers no treatment suggestions, it just says the patient has an elevated risk of dying.
By Jeremy Guttman – In almost every speech given this year, Andy Slavitt, the Acting Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), has emphasized the priority of closing referral loops to strengthen patient care coordination.