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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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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Be careful what you search for.
Dr. Marco Huesch, writing in the online letters section of the July 8 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, reports on a privacy experiment he ran recently on 20 popular healthcare websites.
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It comes as no surprise to many observers that regional health information exchanges are struggling financially.
Research published this week in Health Affairs concluded that “there is a substantial risk that many current efforts to promote health information exchange will fail.”
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The healthcare industry, with the federal government at the helm, is setting sail on a voyage into the unknown: whether and to what extent patients are suffering harm from the systems that providers have spent many billions of dollars buying, and the feds many billions in incentivizing.
“That's the part we don't know,” said Dr. Ron Wyatt, medical director, division of healthcare improvement at the Joint Commission. “We know that probably less than 10% of adverse events are reported. That's how big the water is.”
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States are poised to go on a health insurance exchange spending spree with money in the bank from the federal government.
As Republicans in Congress continue to gripe about spending on the health reform law, a new Government Accountability Office report found that although HHS has awarded around $3.7 billion to states to help establish health insurance exchanges, just over 10% of it—$380 million—had been spent as of March. Around 80% of that $380 million was spent on contracts and consulting, most of which went toward building out information technology systems.
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The sailing term is luffing. When a boat points too close to the wind, its sails flap with little power and its forward progress slows.
Incentive payments for physicians and other eligible professionals to implement electronic health records moved forward in May, according to the latest report from the CMS. But after four straight months of records for the number of payments made, the May figures are rather flappy.
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Watch out for a French person talking about revolution.
“The patient is the revolutionary in healthcare these days,” said Dr. Bettina Experton, a French-born oncologist turned U.S. citizen and health IT entrepreneur. “That is why I think Blue Button is revolutionary.”
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Chopra
In the race of life, Aneesh Chopra has always been a high-energy guy, but these days he's literally a man on the run.
The former White House chief technology officer is one of two candidates in the race for lieutenant governor in Virginia's Democratic primary on Tuesday.
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