Technology

The collaboration between Purdue Pharma and the Virginia Department of Health comes about 2 months after Governor Terry McAuliffe declared the state’s opioid addiction crisis a public health emergency.

The Council for Affordable Quality Health Committee on Operating Rules for Information Exchange is making great strides in certifying health plans for implementing electronic information exchange between payers and providers. The good news for providers is that very little is required of them to reap the benefits of these certification efforts.

The use of health information technology in small primary care practices continues to rise, but a recent study found that the extent of its adoption varies based on practice size, ownership, and financial incentives.

What we're reading, December 29, 2016: President-elect Donald J. Trump considers privatizing veterans' medical care; a new task force to improve sharing of pregnancy status data; and medical marijuana legalization reduced traffic fatalities.

What we’re reading, December 23, 2016: HHS secretary nominee Rep. Tom Price traded $300,000 in healthcare stocks while sponsoring health-related legislature; an economist and a physician suggest creation of digital health biographies; CMS hopes to incentivize cardiac rehabilitation program participation.

Until there is more data to support the outcomes of using telemedicine, payers will be more cautious about getting into reimbursing for the technology, said Anne Schmidt, MD, associate medical director at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama.

While health technology tools get better and better, they provide benefits for patients, but should not be there to replace clinicians, explained Helen Figge, MBA, CPHIMS, FHIMSS, senior vice president of global strategies and development at LumiraDx.

Health information technologies can be implemented without impact on patient satisfaction. The lacking synergistic relationship should be concerning to stakeholders for optimizing costs and quality.

The authors illustrate a methodology for delineating variations in medical costs for patients with similar clinical conditions and needs using electronic health record data.

Hospitals participating in accountable care organizations (ACOs) have greater adoption of health information technology, particularly patient-facing technology and health information exchange, than non-ACO hospitals.

Aligning health information technology with population health requires organizations to think differently about data needs, exchange partners, and how to leverage both for evidence-based action.

The 6th annual Health Information Technology (IT) issue occurs at a time of significant change in US health IT—related policies. These articles will offer guidance to those working to overcome their own health IT challenges and support practitioners’, policy makers’ and researchers’ efforts to leverage health IT in support of a better health system.

There are long-standing problems associated with the administration of healthcare, such as racial and ethnic health disparities, and the geographic variation in the quality and quantity of care provided, that are important for the healthcare industry to address

It is unclear which barriers cause the greatest threats to the successful implementation of an electronic health record (EHR). This paper prioritizes the potential threats to EHR adoption using a novel analytic strategy: item response theory.

Wen Dombrowski, MD, MBA, Resonate Health LLC, said that it’s important to develop health information technologies because the lack thereof not only impacts the individual living with the condition, but the entire environment and community he or she may live in.