Technology

PLAINSBORO, N.J. From leveraging their joint buying power to better deployment of a hard-to-find pediatric liver transplant surgeon, two large healthcare systems in Florida are seeing the benefits of sharing resources on a bigger scale, according to Kavita Patel, MD, of the Brookings Institution, and her co-authors who write in the inaugural issue of The American Journal of Accountable Care.

When you are waiting for results from a medical test like a cancer biopsy, that call from your doctor can't come fast enough. As a doctor, I am sometimes so buried in an avalanche of medical records that it can delay decisions about what to do next.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently announced that Stage 2 of the EHR Meaningful Use program would be extended through 2016, especially as many healthcare CIOs continue to struggle with health IT tool vendors. This also means that Stage 3 will be delayed until 2017.

Chris Belmont, vice president and chief information officer, MD Anderson Cancer Center, says that health systems like Ochsner are using data to validate what they already know about certain patient cases.

Hackensack Alliance ACO integrates pharmacists and adopts new technology as it joins in the bold experiment to lower costs and improve quality under health reform.

Almost half of 206 hospital executives polled in a recent survey said they do not intend to use an accountable care organization (ACO)-like model in their health systems. Only 20% of those polled currently participate in an ACO.

The CMS is giving providers another year to show they've met the Stage 2 criteria of the federal government's incentive program to encourage the adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records. That means the start of the next phase will be pushed back a year.

As policymakers start designing the third phase of Meaningful Use, eight healthcare and IT groups are asking the ONC's Health IT Policy Committee to commit to including patient-generated health data in the requirements.

A bicameral effort is quickly gaining traction in an effort that would forever change the sustainable growth rate (SGR) and Medicare reimbursement model.

About 29,000 people successfully navigated HealthCare.gov and selected an insurance plan on Sunday and Monday, more than the entire number of people who were able to enroll through the federal exchange during the month of October, according to a person familiar with the project.

Nearly every Institute of Medicine report or blueribbon panel tasked with developing ideas for fixing our healthcare delivery system points to the same solution: greater use of health information technology (HIT).

Although health information technology interventions are associated with cost savings and revenue gains, there still are few articles on this topic.

Organizations pursuing change need the infrastructure and tools to effect it. Health information technology is critical to delivery reform but its development will require support and time.

The American Journal of Managed Care was founded in 1995, during the last period of serious reexamination of how healthcare is paid for and how it's delivered. Nearly 20 years later, after the retreat of the first managed care revolution, per capita healthcare costs have more than doubled, and there is again a strong movement toward payment and delivery system reform.

Real-time location systems can capture face time and trade-offs between face time and diagnostic testing so that clinicians' responses to time pressures can be measured.

Balancing competing goals of innovation and regulatory oversight will influence the evolution of the vendor market for certified ambulatory electronic health record products.

Although increasing electronic health record use and delegating the related work improve physician productivity, these 2 strategies interact differently based on practice size.

Dr. Farzad Mostashari, former National Coordinator of Health IT, serves as guest editor of a special issue of AJMC, which covers the breadth of issues concerning how technology is affecting healthcare delivery, quality of care, and payment reform.

Adopting the 5 core medication management elements of meaningful use electronic medical records reduces adverse drug events and saves costs.

While the Affordable Care Act (ACA) aims to reform healthcare nationally, the way in which the law is implemented will vary on a state-by-state basis.

A study to assess clinician attitudes and experiences after participating in a New York City cardiovascular disease focused quality recognition and financial incentive program using health information technology.

Health information technology (HIT) innovation will positively impact and enhance physicians' ability to deliver effective care.

A randomized controlled trial was conducted to assess whether adding a peer testimonial to a mailing increases conversion rates from brand name prescription medications to lower-cost equivalents.

New case management model achieves success in reducing readmissions and is easily duplicated across the Baptist Health System, Inc.

Seeking to defuse a growing political furor as millions of Americans receive cancellation notices from health insurers, the Obama administration will not require insurance companies to upgrade existing individual plans to meet the requirements of the federal healthcare law for 2014.

Researchers who want to study population health using the vast stores of Medicare and Medicaid data will no longer have to order it and wait for the federal government to ship them encrypted data files.

In order to achieve true interoperability, patients' need for better data sharing must come before the interests of providers, vendors and regulators.

Tony Trenkle, the laconic federal official who was both the CMS' point man on the $16.6 billion electronic health-record incentive payment program and its technology leader during the launch of the troubled HealthCare.gov, will be stepping down as the agency's chief information officer and its director of information services to work in the private sector.

The challenges in reforming healthcare seemingly continue to increase.