Network Infrastructure
Every country, every government, every population is participating in a global trial and error when it comes to improving health outcomes. As it finds uptake around the world, health information technology is central to this care revolution, with nations learning from each others' struggles and successes.
It's been almost two weeks since Obamacare's federal insurance exchange website went live, was inundated with traffic, went weird, was taken down for maintenance, then came back online still filled with glitches. Why did such a crucial site fail at such a critical moment? And what are the lessons that can be learned?
As medical practice administrators and physicians head to San Diego for the Medical Group Management Association's 2013 annual conference, they're likely to have money on their minds. Keeping a medical practice going has become a complex, pricey endeavor. At the top of the list of increasing costs: IT.
Even amid the government shutdown, the new online insurance marketplaces -- known as health insurance exchanges -- were up and running today. There were early reports of computer glitches across several states. Some states, with large numbers of uninsured are dealing with problems of a different sort.
On any given day, a disaster occurring somewhere in the country is making news. And while the focus is (rightly) on the human toll and physical destruction these events cause, little attention is paid to how important data and IT infrastructure is lost to provider organizations in the danger zones.
The 595-bed Children's Medical Center in Dallas is the one of the latest hospitals to move forward on the telehealth front, with the launch of its TeleNICU, billed as Texas' first neonatal telemedicine program.
The 24-hospital Sutter Health system was the talk of the town late August after a software glitch rendered its $1 billion electronic health record system inaccessible to nurses and clinical staff. Reflecting back, a Sutter nurse talks about what the health system should have done differently.
Hundreds of patients seen at the medical group practice of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Medical School are being notified that their protected health information has been compromised after an unencrypted laptop was discovered missing from a medical clinic.
The nearly $1 billion electronic health record system at Sutter Health in Northern California crashed in August, leaving nurses and clinical staff not only unable to access vital patient information for a full day, but also scrambling to record new data on paper.
As the Department of Health and Human Services invests $67 million in insurance exchange navigators and $150 million more in enrollment assistance, some attorneys general are raising privacy and fraud concerns, and looking for answers.