Mike Miliard
President Barack Obama roused an enthusiastic crowd in support of his landmark health reform in Maine on Thursday, touting a new course that will "build on the system of private health insurance that we already have," making coverage "more secure and more affordable" for those who already have it, and allowing those who don't have coverage to "finally be able to get it."
No question: The immense show floors at HIMSS10 were vast and dazzling. And no question: As worthy as the products on display in those huge vendor booths may have been, many were trumpeted to journalists and prospective clients with healthy dollops of hype, hot air, and PR-savvy spin.
Cleveland Clinic Chief Information Officer C. Martin Harris, MD, and Peter Neupert, corporate vice president of Microsoft Health Solutions Group are talking about a collaboration that is, in Harris's words, "fundamentally changing the paradigm of chronic disease management."
In the opening keynote at last month's HIMSS10 conference and exhibition, Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse put forth the call.
The Mississippi Coastal Health Information Exchange (MSCHIE) has launched Phase 2 of its deployment, which will expand services to four additional health systems, launch a community outreach training program and integrate with additional electronic health record vendors.
"Aetna is dedicated to helping people achieve health and financial security, and we believe fostering a healthy environment is an important part of this mission," reads the health insurer's environmental policy statement. "We are committed to limiting our environmental impact by reducing our energy consumption and the use of other resources… because we recognize the impact of a clean environment on the health of our members."
NaviNet, the country's largest real-time healthcare communications network, has announced a partnership with major health insurers in New Jersey to build a multi-payer portal as a "one-stop shop" for physicians to communicate directly with an array of health plans.
The Regenstrief Institute, recognized as a healthcare IT leader, has been awarded a contract to help the Social Security Administration and Indiana healthcare providers make disability case determinations faster and better.
The Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare (CAQH), a nonprofit alliance of health plans that seeks to simplify administration for payers and providers and enable better care for patients, has announced a partnership with VeriSign, Inc., the Mountain View, Calif. network infrastructure company.
A simple genetic test can reduce hospitalization rates by almost a third for heart patients taking warfarin, the world's most-prescribed blood thinner, according to a study released today by researchers from Medco Health Solutions, Inc. (in association with the Medco Research Institute) and the Mayo Clinic.