May 2011 - The Health Care Blog - The Network of Care

The Cost Cutting EHR

By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE Healthcare Information Technology (HIT) and Electronic Health Records (EHR) are at the heart of health care transformation. Everything we want to change and improve upon, hinges on the availability of EHRs in every hospital and every...

Published Fri, May 27 2011 8:51 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Margalit Gur-Arie, EHR features

Coordinating Care: It’s A Moral Question, But Not A Hard One

By JOE FLOWER Under the headline, “Medicare Plan for Payments Irks Hospitals,” today’s New York Times details the opposition stirred up by the government’s “value-based purchasing” initiative. If you’re buying anything (and the US federal government is...

Published Tue, May 31 2011 2:04 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Medicare, Joe Flower, Care coordination

CABG in Decline

By MERRILL GOOZNER The number of Americans with serious heart disease in need of hospital treatment is on the decline. A new study in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association shows the overall rate of coronary revascularizations — ranging from...

Published Thu, May 05 2011 6:51 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Physicians, Merrill Goozner, cardiology, PCI, CABG

Hockey Teams and AED’s Save Lives

By VIPAN NIKORE, MD I’ve played over a thousand ice hockey games in my life, but I had no idea that last month’s adult men’s league game in Cleveland would be the most memorable. I grew up in Canada, three blocks from Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey...

Published Fri, May 06 2011 6:26 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, AED, Vipan Nikore, Hockey, Defibrillators, CPR

Neither the Republicans Nor the Democrats Want to Face the Provider Cost Problem

By ROBERT MCDONOUGH A key piece of Paul Ryan’s deficit reduction plan is to change Medicare as we know it. It appears his bold Medicare premium support proposal is failing to gain traction–it is dead as part of any deficit reduction deal this year...

Published Mon, May 09 2011 9:30 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Defined contribution, Democrats and Republicans, Medicare cost, Robert Lasewski

Google Health Put in Stasis

By JOHN MOORE About a year ago we posted a piece that basically summed up Google Health as on its death bed. Google, of course was quick to defend itself saying that Google Health was very much alive and well. We even had a long conversation with the...

Published Tue, May 10 2011 12:50 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, John Moore, Google Health

Where is there mHealth, really?

Health 2.0 aficionados will know that I’ve been railing against the term “mobile health” or “mHealth” for about three years. Health 2.0 is simply the next thing in health technology, and will remain so (whatever that might...

Published Wed, May 04 2011 5:36 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Health 2.0, Matthew Holt, mHealth, micro, J&J, Babycenter, Episurveyor, Datadyne

Single Payer Health: It’s Only Fair

By SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS The United States is the only major nation in the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care as a right to its people. Meanwhile, we spend about twice as much per capita on health care and, in a wide number of instances...

Published Tue, May 17 2011 8:20 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, health care reform, Single payer, American Health Security Act, Bernie Sanders

High costs cut drug use…and not in a good way

This pretty interesting study from Avalere Health confirms what several others have shown. If you add a user fee to any medical procedure people use less of it. And of course their decision to use it less is not based on whether it’s medically necessary...

Published Fri, May 20 2011 12:48 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Matthew Holt, pharmaceuticals, micro

The Fall and Rise of Asynchronicity

By PAUL LEVY The daughter of a friend was bemoaning poor connectivity of the internet at a university in Europe. She said, “It’s vital since I don’t have any other method of communication.”My friend noted, “I was telling...

Published Sat, May 21 2011 5:20 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Paul Levy, Email, BlackBerry

NPfIT Blazing the Trail

By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE The National Audit Office (NAO) in the UK has recently published a report evaluating the status of “The National Programme for IT in the NHS” (NPfIT). The program is a very ambitious top down initiative to deploy Health Information...

Published Tue, May 24 2011 5:34 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Uncategorized

Stifling Primary Care: Why Does CMS Continue To Support The RUC?

By BRIAN KLEPPER, PAUL FISCHER, MD, & KATHLEEN ANNE BEHAN Last October, the Wall Street Journal ran a damning expose about the Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC), a secretive, specialist-dominated panel within the American Medical Association...

Published Wed, May 25 2011 6:22 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Brian Klepper, THCB, primary care, RUC, Paul Fischer, Kathleen Anne Behan, RUC reform

Medicare Announces Rules For Quality Bonuses To Hospitals

By JORDAN RAU Medicare took its broadest step yet in moving away from its traditional hospital payment method, finalizing a plan to alter reimbursements based on the quality of care hospitals provide and patients’ satisfaction during their stays. The...

Published Sun, May 01 2011 8:29 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Medicare, Hospitals, CMS, Jordan Rau, Quality bonuses

(Over)Simplifying EHR Usability

By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE Dr. P patted the middle aged patient on the back, helped him off the elevated exam table and guided him to the chair by the sink. He picked up the chart and using the exam table as his desk he flipped through the chart, pulling out...

Published Mon, May 02 2011 5:13 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: EHR, THCB, Margalit Gur-Arie, VistA, Usability

A Mother’s Day Manifesto: Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat

By AMY BERMAN I’ve been writing about safe and effective maternity care for years and direct a coordinated national effort to transform maternity care, but this is a post where the political gets personal. Last weekend, I attended the birthday party for...

Published Tue, May 03 2011 1:06 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Uncategorized

May 2011 - The Health Care Blog

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