Quality and Safety
The Institute of Medicine has issued a new report calling for standardized social and behavioral data to be included in electronic health records. That may be good for population health research, but could be unwelcome news for system developers, and for physicians who already complain that EHRs are burdensome and distract from care delivery.
Persistent regulatory and reimbursement roadblocks notwithstanding, nine out of 10 providers are moving forward with telemedicine projects, according to a new survey.
In most of the country, it is still nearly impossible to compare the price and quality of anything in healthcare. Websites that mine such data are springing up to fill the void. But thanks to a law enacted in October, Massachusetts health insurers now have to make all their prices public -- in advance.
As chief data officer at Seattle Children's Hospital, Eugene Kolker has a fairly unusual job title -- especially for this industry. "In healthcare it's extremely, extremely rare," he says. But that may be changing.
Just a few years ago, discussion of the use of radio-frequency identification in healthcare was usually limited to drug manufacturers and wholesalers. But more and more hospitals are using RFID technology to improve safety and efficiency.
The final Physician Fee Schedule rule for 2015, published by CMS on Oct. 31, brings with it a number of changes that physicians and practice managers need to understand about chronic care, telehealth and meaningful use.
MedStar Health, the largest healthcare provider in Maryland and the Washington, D.C., region, and Cerner have signed a seven-year agreement to streamline operations, help improve the quality of patient care and develop technologies that align with MedStar's vision.
Worries over the usability of electronic health records have escalated recently -- in tandem, it seems, with their broad adoption. Now comes research from Frost & Sullivan that confirms this, and suggests that EHR usability challenges are likely to get worse before they get better.
Purchasing spree continues as Optum gains chronic condition management, smoking cessation and other services.
What propels a group practice to fifteen-fold growth? At Westmed Medical Group, in New York's Westchester County, the surge can be attributed largely to care transformation driven by analytics.