Mike Miliard
Many doctors are deeply skeptical about the future of medicine, according to a recent survey conducted by athenahealth, the provider of Web-based practice management tools, and Sermo, the largest online community for physicians.
The Hawaii Medical Service Association (HMSA), the Blue Cross Blue Shield plan of the Aloha State, will become the first health plan to deploy American Well's new Online Care Team Edition. The new service will bring live, on-demand specialist care consultations into primary care docs' exam rooms – reducing the delay, inconvenience and cost associated with the traditional patient referral process.
The TriZetto Group and 3M Health Information Systems announced an agreement last month that gives TriZetto certain exclusivity to include 3M's ICD-10 Code Translation Tool with several new services for payers under its TriZetto Advantage 10 Services.
Even as providers work to update their security environments, hospital data continues to be at serious risk, according to the 2010 HIMSS Analytics Report: Security of Patient Data.
Providence Health & Services, the Oregon-based not-for-profit health system, has upgraded to GE Healthcare's Centricity EMR platform.
California software company Oracle plans to acquire Phase Forward, a Waltham, Mass.-based maker of software applications for life sciences companies and healthcare providers.
Maine's HealthInfoNet, the state's designated health information exchange, was awarded $4.7 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, just as Gov. John E. Baldacci issued an executive order creating two new state entities responsible for the expansion and coordination of healthcare IT.
President Barack Obama roused an enthusiastic crowd in support of his landmark health reform in Maine on Thursday, touting a new course that will "build on the system of private health insurance that we already have," making coverage "more secure and more affordable" for those who already have it, and allowing those who don't have coverage to "finally be able to get it."
No question: The immense show floors at HIMSS10 were vast and dazzling. And no question: As worthy as the products on display in those huge vendor booths may have been, many were trumpeted to journalists and prospective clients with healthy dollops of hype, hot air, and PR-savvy spin.
Cleveland Clinic Chief Information Officer C. Martin Harris, MD, and Peter Neupert, corporate vice president of Microsoft Health Solutions Group are talking about a collaboration that is, in Harris's words, "fundamentally changing the paradigm of chronic disease management."