Patty Enrado

The University of California at Merced’s Valley Telehealth Partnership is too new to have made an impact on the physician and nurse shortages in the San Joaquin Valley.

Health insurers’ focus on administrative cost reduction has been intensified by the economic recession and Washington’s healthcare reform agenda.

Care Health Plan is planning to release a second round of healthcare information technology grants in 2010 to position local community clinics to take advantage of HITECH Act funds.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) posted on the RAC Web sites the first new issues of completed reviews in early August.

The Nebraska Health Information Initiative (NeHII) is gearing up for the next level of work with its sights set on statewide implementation, after celebrating the success of its pilot at its annual meeting in July.

The Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) will offer two courses on electronic health record use and implementation beginning in September.

HealthAlliance Hospital and Fallon Clinic are the first two healthcare organizations to go live with SAFEHealth (Secure Architecture For Exchanging Health Information), a regional health information exchange.

While the economic downturn has forced SelectHealth to discontinue some of its projects, the health plan has reallocated its resources to new campaigns, thanks to data from its communications partner, the Eliza Corp.

When Community Health Plan of Washington implemented ZeOmega’s Jiva care management software in October 2008, the health plan saw the immediate elimination of duplicate assessments being done on the same patients by its use, disease and case management departments, said Sandra Hewett, the plan’s delegated services administrator.

After a successful pilot in its Hudson, N.Y. region, MVP Healthcare is rolling out McKesson’s Advanced Diagnostics Management (ADM) to the rest of its provider network to automate the clinical review and authorization of imaging tests.