Premier national quality improvement initiative, QUEST, has reported savings of approximately $11.65 billion through process improvements and analytics, according to its new whitepaper. In addition to the savings, QUEST also reported preventing over 135,000 deaths in the last five years. QUEST was launched in 2008, and has since grown to include 350 hospitals. In the Read more…
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Physicians’ compliance wish list for 2014
2013 was a rather happening year in terms of healthcare laws. There was the Affordable Care Act and its security concerns, the HIPAA Omnibus final rule and the HIPAA Audit Program which gave healthcare providers plenty to worry about. 2014 is going to be no different. There will be plenty of regulation changes that the industry will Read more…
CMS to conduct end-to-end ICD-10 testing
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced on Wednesday that it will offer “end-to-end”ICD-10 testing for a small group of providers in the summer. The announcement marks a shift from the previous stance by CMS where it had proclaimed that it would not conduct any external testing for providers. The CMS now says that Read more…
Proposed Health IT Bill Draws Backlash
A new Health IT bill, that aims to reduce regulatory burden in the industry, is drawing backlash from mHealth advocates. They believe that this bill puts lives at risk, and damages the industry. The Preventing Regulatory Overreach to Enhance Care Technology (PROTECT) Act of 2014, which was introduced by Sens. Angus King, an independent from Read more…
Providing flight medical crews access to patient records may save lives
Researches from the Case Western Reserve University’s (CWRU) nursing school are aiming to establish a connection between hospital patient records and medical flight crews. They are aiming to do this based on research that when local hospitals transfer patients to higher-level care facilities, there is a 30% higher death rate than if they had stayed Read more…
Do we value our physicians?
Sometimes I wonder if we value our physicians, or if we think of them as just another problem? As I take a closer look inside the healthcare industry, it seems to me that the number of people with clipboards has grown outrageously – people who have a lot of control over physicians’ lives and are Read more…
Are there enough physicians around?
The goal of the Affordable Care Act is to provide affordable and quality healthcare coverage to more people. But do we have enough physicians to address their health concerns? This debate continues with very little conclusive evidence to prove one case or the other. Those who see a shortage of physicians attribute it to America’s aging population Read more…
How to ensure cloud data security?
The benefits of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are still being debated. The roll-out of the ACA website, Healthcare.gov, and its subsequent problems provide sufficient evidence for enterprises to consider moving to the cloud in order to ensure data security. However, the Healthcare.gov debacle proves that enterprises cannot move their sensitive data to the cloud Read more…
Lessons to learn from Target data breach
Recently, the second biggest retail company in the United States revealed that data of up to 110 million customers, had been compromised by hackers. Theoretically speaking, it equates to 34% of the US population, and is a breach of massive proportions –unparalleled in history. What can the healthcare industry learn from this? Although, chances are Read more…
Succeeding with the ACO model
There is a common misconception about all value-based care delivery models being unique. If this was the case, the lessons learned from the models would not be replicable. While the starting point for many value-based care delivery models may be unique, they are conceptually quite similar to each other. The underlying feature in all of Read more…