Quality and Safety
Kaiser Permanente this week has opened a new Center for Total Health near Capitol Hill.
On March 31, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services proposed new regulations for accountable care organizations. While they are complex – in excess of 400 pages in length – it is also clear that technology will play a significant role in implementing ACOs.
With the continuing weak economy and the advent of health reform, bundled reimbursement and accountable care organizations expected to ratchet up the financial pressure on their businesses, physicians are increasingly looking to health systems as employers.
Meaningful use incentives, HIPAA and ICD-10 conversion are combining to create a high demand for healthcare IT professionals in the marketplace. Eric Marx, vice president of healthcare IT services for IT staffing and recruiting firm Modis, discusses what hospitals and other healthcare organizations are doing to find the right people for the right jobs.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a final rule Monday on telemedicine credentialing and privileging that aims to not only make the process less cumbersome for small hospitals and critical access hospitals (CAHs) in rural areas, but also to provide more timely care.
Many vendors give short shrift to the usability of their electronic medical records, says Jiajie Zhang, who is devoting the next three-plus years to addressing this usability factor - something he believes has been a barrier to physician adoption.
A podiatrist in private practice in Birmingham, Ala., says using an iPad has improved his workflow and given him more time with his patients.
The Health IT Standards Committee has begun exploring some of the functions that electronic health records should be capable of performing in Stage 2 of meaningful use, with providers using health information exchange to send patients their information to a personal health record (PHR) a prominent example.
The Montana Senate voted to restore the $35 million in federal incentives for electronic medical records for hospitals and community health centers across the state this week.
In response to the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis in Japan, Elsevier has offered free access to its primary online clinical reference tools to all IPs originating from that country.