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With annual healthcare expenditures topping $2.7 trillion, industry leaders are rushing to take new cost-cutting measures. One of those measures involves displaying the costs of lab tests in an EHR so docs can see a real-time price comparison of what they're ordering. From a savings perspective, it's working.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) has proposed a bill to extend meaningful use incentives to mental health practitioners, who currently have been left out of the program.
When a medical privacy breach occurs, it's most often the patient who gets notified that their personal information was compromised, not the provider. But that's not always the case.
Currently, mental health providers are not eligible to receive federal electronic health record incentive payments under the meaningful use program. One U.S. Senator, however, is working to change that.
If hospital chief information officers and vendor hiring managers think it's tough to find qualified health IT workers now, just wait until technology implementation moves beyond EHR installation, data capture and moderate interoperability to a full-blown effort to transform a broken healthcare industry.
Don't hold your breath if you are looking for a delay in meaningful use Stage 2 of the federal EHR incentive program.
Working in a hospital IT department is no walk in the park. Teams who were named to our 2013 Best Hospital IT Departments list opened up about how they keep employees motivated, retain top talent and meet a laundry list of deadlines -- all without losing their minds.
Researchers and other clinicians love it. Privacy officers, not so much. The popular file hosting site isn't HIPAA compliant, and hasn't shown much interest in business associate agreements.
"Everyone is gaming the system," Nirav Shah, MD, said of NY's Medicaid, just not for much longer. Reforms that include non-traditional services put the state on track to save $34 billion.
Wish there could be a delay of Stage 2 meaningful use? Talk to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, not the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. And don't hold your breath.