January 2011 - The Health Care Blog

Early Experiences with Hospital Certification

By JOHN HALAMKA, MD As one of the pilot sites for CCHIT's EHR Alternative Certification for Hospitals (EACH), I promised the industry an overview of my experience. It's going very well. Here's what has happened thus far. 1. Recognizing that...

Published Mon, Jan 10 2011 3:20 AM by The Health Care Blog

Fixing The Failure At Physician Compare

By MICHAEL MILLENSON The launch of Medicare's Physician Compare website at year-end should have been a watershed event in the long campaign for health care transparency and patient empowerment. Instead – and it pains me to write this – Physician....

Published Fri, Jan 28 2011 7:08 AM by The Health Care Blog

The $1000 Coding Error

By MICHAELA DINAN As a graduate student in the health field I often get phone calls from various family members and friends asking what I happen to know about different drugs, procedures, and devices. I was having one such conversation... Read More.....

Published Mon, Jan 24 2011 9:06 AM by The Health Care Blog

The Compromise

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI This week's House health care repeal vote is little more than a political stunt--everyone knows the effort will die in the Senate. But, when the day is done the only way for the Republicans to do anything... Read More...

Published Tue, Jan 18 2011 2:00 AM by The Health Care Blog

Centrists Back Health Care Reform

By MERRILL GOOZNER The tone on Capitol Hill during Tuesday’s debate was more civil, the partisan rhetoric less harsh than previous exchanges on the House floor. But there’s little doubt that the Republican-led House will vote later today to repeal......

Published Wed, Jan 19 2011 5:30 AM by The Health Care Blog

What Most Needs Repealing and Replacing

By JOHN GOODMAN, PhD Tomorrow night the House of Representatives will debate the repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), what many call "ObamaCare." Some critics complain that this is a futile exercise because there is...

Published Mon, Jan 17 2011 8:23 AM by The Health Care Blog

The Study Question

By MAYRA ZUCKERBERG Let's start at the beginning. Why do we do research and write papers? No, not just to get famous, tenured or funded. The fundamental task of science is to answer questions. The big questions of all time... Read More...

Published Sat, Jan 08 2011 8:30 AM by The Health Care Blog

The Price of Marginal Thinking in Healthcare Policy

By MARYA ZILBERBERG, MD I find it fascinating how our brains have this propensity to latch on to what is at the margins at the expense of seeing the bulk of what sits in the center. This peripheral only vision... Read More...

Published Mon, Jan 31 2011 6:45 AM by The Health Care Blog

Defining a Maturity Model for HIEs

By JOHN MOORE Before entering the convoluted healthcare IT sector, I had worked in the manufacturing sector both as an IT analyst and in corporate strategy for Europe’s second largest enterprise software company. In those many years I learn quite... Read...

Published Sun, Jan 30 2011 8:39 AM by The Health Care Blog

Updates on Proposed Stage 2 and 3 Meaningful Use Criteria

By VINCE KURAITIS, JD The Health IT Policy Committee has published proposed Stage 2 and 3 Meaningful Use Recommendations and they’re open for public comment until February 25. I’ll share a couple of particularly useful and well written analyses and.....

Published Thu, Jan 20 2011 9:18 AM by The Health Care Blog

Sam's Club as a locus for (The) Prevention (Plan)?

By Matthew Holt There's lots going on in the world of online tools for health improvement and prevention. Yesterday I saw a new demo of the latest version of Keas (can't tell you much but think Zynga!). Just this Fall... Read More...

Published Fri, Jan 07 2011 12:42 PM by The Health Care Blog

That Which We Call a Rose

By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE What’s in a name? Sometimes nothing much. Sometimes a shift in paradigm. The Medical Record in its current format was created over a century ago by Dr. Henry Stanley Plummer at the Mayo Clinic. When in the... Read More...

Published Sat, Jan 08 2011 6:19 AM by The Health Care Blog

Hospital Culture and Surviving the New Landscape

By KENT BOTTLES, MD A recent flight on Southwest reminded me of the importance of culture in navigating change in a rapidly evolving environment like we have in health care in the United States today. It is all too easy... Read More...

Published Tue, Jan 11 2011 6:55 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Kent Bottles, ACOs, Culture

Patients Lie

By DAVIS LIU, MD The most common question first year medical students ask me is how do they become efficient at taking a patient history. Can they skip certain parts of taking the patient history and avoid asking about a... Read More...

Published Wed, Jan 26 2011 8:33 AM by The Health Care Blog

What Do Medical Errors Cost Your State?

By PAUL LEVY GE Healthcare offers this calculator, based on data from the Society of Actuaries, to show the cost of medical errors for a given population. I inserted the population of Massachusetts from the most recent US Census to... Read More...

Published Wed, Jan 12 2011 6:25 AM by The Health Care Blog