Government & Policy

Since 2007, and in the wake of the Great Recession, an additional 10 million Americans have enrolled in Medicaid, at the same time that states' tax revenue declined. But those long-plagued by Medicaid debt are starting to address their problems, several states are forging ahead with accountable care innovations and the consumer experience is becoming an increasingly important point of focus as states begin to modernize their systems.

Nearly 50 years after the creation of Medicaid, the program faces steep financial challenges. Modernizing the IT systems underpinning Medicaid promises to usher in a more consumer-friendly era.

The plan to insure as many as 27 million Americans under the federal health law beginning this fall will be the biggest expansion of health coverage since that launch. But six months before the process begins, questions are mounting about the scope and adequacy of efforts to reach out to consumers.

Robert Rowley, MD, delves into CMS data reported from meaningful use attestation and thus "arguably the most accurate source, free from vendor hyperbole," to determine which vendors are gaining ground, those that are sinking, and find patterns of doctors switching EHRs.

As mobile health gains ground as a way to improve population health and curb healthcare costs, models for making mHealth financially sustainable are topmost in the minds of stakeholders in the U.S. and across the globe.

Robert Jarrin, senior director of government affairs at Qualcomm Incorporated -- like most people involved in the mHealth world -- is waiting with bated breath for the Food and Drug Administration to finalize its mobile medical apps guidance.

Axial Exchange, a developer of patient engagement technologies, unveiled this week its Patient Engagement Index, which ranks U.S. hospitals based on how involved their patient communities are with their own care.

Although HIE "is advancing rapidly" in much of the country, "it is being held back by demand--and supply-side friction created by variation in federal and state programs and policies that give unequal and sometimes conflicting emphasis on interoperability," Micky Tripathi, Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative president and the federal Health IT Policy Committee's HIE workgroup chair told the panel April 3.

For 15 years, Congress has bestowed special privileges to some small remote hospitals, usually in rural areas, to help them stay afloat. Medicare pays them more than it pays most hospitals and exempts them from financial pressure to operate efficiently and requirements to reveal how their patients fare. Nearly one in four hospitals qualifies for the program. Despite these benefits, there's new evidence that the quality of many of these hospitals may be deteriorating.

Dubbing it "the next great American project," President Barack Obama announced the launch of the BRAIN Initiative, aimed at unlocking the many mysteries of the brain. The $100 million "to get the project off the ground" comes from the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation, and is part of the budget the president will send to Congress next week.