The findings of a new study published this week in BMJ Quality & Safety show the first evidence that electronic health records can play a role in reducing hospital readmissions of high-risk heart failure patients.
The study evaluated more than 1,700 adult inpatients diagnosed with heart failure, myocardial infarction and pneumonia over a two-year period at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. With the use of software developed to assess the patients on a daily basis at highest risk, researchers were able reduce the readmission rate of those studied by 26%.
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A bipartisan House bill has been introduced that would require disclosure of Medicare payment information on individual physicians and other healthcare providers and suppliers, to enable the public to compare providers of services.
A companion bill has been pending in the Senate since June, and one Senate spokesperson says the final proposal may be added to the upcoming “doc fix” legislation to come later this year that would change how Medicare doctors are paid under the sustainable growth-rate formula.
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Eight out of 10 eligible hospitals and 58% of eligible physicians and other medical professionals have received payments totaling $15.5 billion under the federal electronic health record incentive payment program, according to the latest CMS data.
Through June, 4,024 hospitals have shared nearly $9.2 billion dollars to adopt, implement, upgrade and/or meaningfully use certified EHRs under the Medicaid and Medicare EHR incentive payment programs created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
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Mobile computing devices are becoming almost as much of an essential tool in U.S. physician practices as the exam table, according to a new survey.
Nearly 80% of 300 U.S. practicing physicians in primary care, family and internal medicine that were sampled and surveyed in April said they were using a smartphone in their “day-to-day practice.” Another 61% were using mobile tablets.
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Craig Michael Lie Njie spent a chunk of his life developing an online privacy shield, but when he tried to get his own mother to use it, she wouldn't click on the button. Why?
According to Lie Njie, loading up his software would have meant his mother acknowledging cyber-insecurity as real. Most Americans don't want to know.
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The Obama administration is conducting targeted audits of hospitals to find possible upcoding of medical services related to use of electronic health records.
Don White, a spokesman for the HHS Office of the Inspector General, said the OIG is conducting audits of “specific institutions” on EHR-related overbilling.
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So far, members of a trade group of health information technology developers like some of what they see in a federal health IT safety initiative that focuses on quantifying any adverse impacts their software is having on patients. But these vendors are withholding final judgment until more plan details are unveiled.
On July 2, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS released its 50-page Health Information Technology Patient Safety Action and Surveillance Plan that creates an infrastructure to collect and analyze data about health IT-related patient safety events.
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Technology industry association leaders who testified Thursday before a House subcommittee hearing on whether legislation is needed for data breach reporting called for Congress to pre-empt state laws on data breaches. But at least one witness opposed such preemption.
“There is a growing and exceptionally strong case to be made for the creation of a national data breach notification framework that supersedes state data breach laws,” said Dan Liutikas, chief legal officer of Washington- based Computing Technology Industry Association, a trade group for the computer hardware manufacturers, software developers and other information technology specialists.
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There was good news and bad news in a new study on the costs versus benefits of electronic health-record use in ambulatory care.
First the good news. The adoption and use of EHRs by physicians in three Massachusetts communities appears to have reduced cost growth. Use of EHRs coincided with costs that were $5.14 per patient per month lower than projected, compared with a control group, according to a report appearing July 16 online in JAMA Internal Medicine.
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Many popular mobile health applications may help improve your fitness and well-being, but users should weigh those benefits against the likely loss of privacy from the personal information they extract in return for their services, according to new reports by a California-based privacy rights group.
Unbeknownst to most users, “(m)ore than 75% of the free mobile health apps and 45% of the paid apps we researched use some kind of behavioral tracking, often through multiple third-party analytics tools,” and often with multiple tracking devices operating simultaneously.
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Mostashari
CMS officials pushed back Wednesday on Republican suggestions that a pause is needed in the electronic health-record incentive program.
“A pause in the program would stall the progress that's been hard fought,” Dr. Farzad Mostashari, national coordinator for health information technology, said at a Wednesday hearing on the program by the Senate Finance Committee.
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