Government & Policy
"In addition to being a law enforcement challenge, gun violence is also a serious public health issue that affects thousands of individuals, families and communities across the nation," President Barack Obama wrote in his memorandum to the Centers for Disease Control Jan. 16, when he charged the agency with conducting research into the matter.
There are well-known ways that thieves make use of medical data and then there are some surprises, such as marketing ploys.
More than 100 ACOs officially started in January, and amid perennial concerns over Medicare spending, federal health officials are hoping to show that ACOs can improve the program and reform care systems.
Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record payments are estimated to have blasted through $10.3 billion to a total of 180,200 physicians and hospitals through December since the program's inception. December's payments of $1.25 billion were driven by the largest amount of hospital payments for an individual month.
While the mobile health industry outpaces federal regulators, two experts weigh in on which apps should be subject to policy.
Electronic health records, mobile technologies, and analytics can forge a potent triptych to make sure that more medical errors get reported. Here's how that could work.
David Lareau, CEO of Medicomp, discusses successful single payer systems in other nations, how other countries view our healthcare system, and what it will take to bend the cost curve here in the U.S.
Deborah Peel, MD, was trained as a Freudian psychoanalyst and worked as a psychiatrist in Austin, Texas, for nearly three decades before becoming a privacy activist, founding the group Patient Privacy Rights in 2006 after being appalled by HIPAA's evolution into what she sees as a weak baseline for privacy and security.
In 2013, HIEs may be evolving in regions where there previously wasn't a huge need for information sharing. 2013 is also likely to bring a new focus on HIE interoperability, sustainability and clinical and business value.
The continuing saga around the deadline delay for states to decide whether they'll establish their own health insurance exchanges doesn't change the final upshot: All states are anticipated to have an online insurance marketplace, one way or another.
The delays may also make a federal/state partnership model for the exchange more palatable and a way out for unprepared states, at least in the initial years, according to an expert on state healthcare issues.