Quality and Safety
A new government demonstration project will bring together Medicare, private insurers and states to improve primary care and reduce costs, with healthcare information technology as an underpinning.
The results of a new study show heart failure patients who use an interactive telehealth system spend less time in the hospital and experience a higher quality of care.
The worldwide market for Hospital Information Systems (HIS) is positioned for significant growth in the coming years, according to a new study from GlobalData.
Many vendors, of course, are benefiting from the stimulus, with scores of hospitals scrambling to install EMR and CPOE systems in hopes of drawing a portion of the billions of dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
As Will Rogers said, “"It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it in a minute.” But today – with close to 50 physician-rating sites – a reputation can be ruined by a click. Some doctors, who are trying to prevent this from happening are getting a lot of flak for having patients sign what some patients are calling “medical gag orders or contracts.”
Outdated hospital communications systems -- based on blaring PAs and multiple, often incompatible mobile devices -- are causing confusion, reducing efficiency, wasting money, and helping contribute to serious staffing shortages.
Despite controversy surrounding physician rating Web sites, their use by patients has been limited to date, and a majority of reviews appear to be positive, according to a new study.
The Department of Health and Human Services will conduct two surveys to find out more about patient perceptions and preferences for the use of healthcare information technology.
Approximately one-third of all falls taken by seniors require medical treatment, and 10 percent eventually lead to death. Those statistics are spurring Robert Miller to develop a "smart shoe" that would help healthcare providers detect problems with balance and walking and alert seniors before they fall.
The Affordable Care Act offers effective new technology and sophisticated data analysis for reducing healthcare fraud that will build on programs that helped Medicare and Medicaid recover billions of dollars in 2009, according to the government's annual Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program (HCFAC) report.