A scheduled House committee hearing on the Food and Drug Administration's progress toward implementing a federal law requiring it to develop a regulatory strategy for health information technology was postponed Thursday, as the government shutdown continued into its third day.
Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, was scheduled to testify before the Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on the Food and Drug Administration Safety Innovation Act.
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Planned Parenthood of the Heartland filed a lawsuit in federal court Sept. 30 asking a judge to grant a stay against a rule from the Iowa Board of Medicine that would restrict abortion access in the state.
On Aug. 30, members of the state board voted to adopt rules that would ban
telemedicine delivery for medical abortion and require that patients receive a physical examination before and after the administration of an abortion-inducing drug. The medical board asserts that the telemedicine practices “are inconsistent with the protocols approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the manufacturer of the drugs” because they don't include an in-person meeting with a physician.
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The annual Health 2.0 Conference is wrapping up in Santa Clara, Calif., today, and with it come several launches worth noting.
One is the start of a $100,000 developer's challenge, seeking cloud-based, “innovative health applications that will revolutionize the way physicians and hospitals educate patients,” according to the contest sponsors.
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As healthcare providers work to adopt electronic health records and achieve Stage 2 meaningful-use standards, most Americans are confused and concerned about the transition from paper to digital, according to a survey by Xerox.
Xerox, which polled about 2,000 U.S. adults in its fourth annual EHR survey, found that only 29% of them had been told by their physicians that their medical records would be converted from paper to digital format. And although most of the respondents think EHRs will reduce healthcare costs (62%) and improve quality of healthcare service (73%), even more (83%) worry about digital issues including security. Nearly seven out of 10 do not want their medical records in a digital format.
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The key to effective health information technology in a small, office-based medical practice is to properly install the newly purchased electronic health-record system, according to a new report from KLAS Enterprises.
KLAS's review of 27 vendors' products found that unhappiness with an EHR vendor's installation effort leads to practices switching to another vendor. It also found that such flipping is on the rise. KLAS did not quantify, in aggregate, the percentage of practices committed to changing systems.
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The humble stretcher used for transporting patients has gone high-tech and high-cost. The average price paid for stretchers jumped 20% over the past year as more hospitals purchased costlier models that have complex features, such as motorized drives or compatibility with X-ray imaging devices, according to the Modern Healthcare/ECRI Institute Technology Price Index. But one expert raised questions about whether the technological advances are worth the price.
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Alexander
Seventeen Senate Republicans are asking HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to again delay the looming implementation of more stringent criteria for the federal electronic health record incentive payment program. Their request follows a plea to providers from a leading EHR vendor to ask the government for more time.
Their call came in a letter Tuesday to Sebelius requesting an extension of the Stage 2 meaningful-use requirements by one year “for providers who need extra time to meet the new requirements. Providers who are ready to attest to Stage 2 in 2014 should be able to do so with current policy,” the senators said.
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HHS is searching for the best idea for a system that captures essential data from durable medical equipment, such as loss of power, GPS location and privacy-protected user information during emergencies.
Thousands of people in the U.S. rely on electrically powered durable medical equipment to meet their medical needs at home and often have to find help in shelters or emergency rooms during extended power outages, according to HHS.
The department's office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, or ASPR, kicked off the Ideation Challenge, a contest to find ideas for determining the location and the status of durable medical equipment—such as oxygen concentrators and portable ventilators—to help users in emergencies. The system should also gather the power level and battery life of the equipment and the time and date. HHS envisions a network that's accessible to all those who use durable medical equipment in their homes and sends data securely to other secure information systems.
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The American College of Physicians released a Web-based clinical decision support tool for internal medicine physicians known as ACP Smart Medicine.
Accessible from desktops, smartphones and tablets, the online tool includes 500 modules with evidence-based content and recommendations for a variety of conditions and diseases.
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There are more than 200 mobile healthcare applications co-branded with healthcare organizations available on the two main online app marketplaces, Google Play and the Apple App Store, a new research report shows.
“The box we had around this was the hospital's name—it had to be clearly designated as an app from them,” said Brian Dolan, managing editor and co-founder of MobiHealthNews.com, a website that covers the burgeoning mobile health app space. “It was built for them or built by them and it had to be for patients. We wanted this to be about patient engagement.”
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The American College of Physicians is nervous about where HHS is headed with the criteria for meaningful use of electronic health records.
The organization wrote a letter to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology addressing “what has been released for Stage 2 and what we have been told to expect for Stage 3” in the federal EHR meaningful-use program.
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