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The proposed Medicaid expansion is characterized as the largest public administration challenge that states have ever faced, but with adequate support from government and private philanthropies, the program has the potential to become a national leader in effective, high-quality care over the next five years, according to a recent article in Health Affairs.
The greatest threat to the U.S. budget stability in the coming decade is the growth of federal spending on healthcare, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which found that spending for Medicare and Medicaid, under current law, is expected to keep growing faster than the economy, reaching 6.6 percent of the gross domestic product by 2020 and potentially reaching 10 percent by 2035.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has awarded the Kansas Health Policy Authority a $1.7 million grant to fund the initial planning process for deploying health IT within the state Medicaid system and Children’s Health Insurance Program.
The internal affairs unit of the Detroit Police Department teamed up with the Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion on Tuesday in the investigation of two recent incidents involving medical record theft that took place this fall from health programs within the city.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have significantly revised their calculations of Medicare fee-for-service error rates in 2009.
Written by Jeff Byers
Achieving meaningful use for EHR systems won’t be easy--but is possible, according to a report published in September by the Computer Science Corporation, “Meaningful Use for Hospitals: The Top Ten Challenges.”
Last night, President Barack Obama made his healthcare reform speech to Congress, adamantly expressing his determination to be the final U.S. president to take up this cause.
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has released a report expressing concern about the over-utilization of ultrasound devices in specific U.S. counties.
A collection of hospital industry groups, accompanied by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a White House press conference on Wednesday, agreed to accept $155 billion less in reimbursements from the federal government in an attempt to ensure that healthcare reform will be deficit-neutral.
Healthcare reform cannot survive on expanding coverage alone; it requires promoting best practices to fix what is broken, wrote President Barack Obama in a letter sent June 2 to Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Max Baucus, D-Mont.,--the two key stakeholders who have been at odds over the payor component of the administration's healthcare reform plan.
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A systematic review of the Massachusetts healthcare system found significant variations amongst hospitals and physicians that were not based on quality of care, according to a preliminary investigation conducted by the office of Attorney General Martha Coakley.
Medicaid programs in South Carolina, Alaska, Kentucky and Wisconsin will receive federal matching funds for state planning activities necessary to implement the EHR incentive program established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reported Thursday.
The American Hospital Association (AHA) has sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., urging that Congress maintain the level of insurance coverage offered in the House version of healthcare reform when it reconciles the competing Senate and House healthcare reform bills.
An “inappropriate definition" of meaningful use and “inefficient administration” of the Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive programs will lead to failed implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), resulting in the “needless squandering of resources and significant disruption” to the U.S. healthcare system, according to a letter written to David Blumenthal, MD, from the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA).
CalOptima, a Medicaid managed care plan serving Orange County, Calif., has identified the potential loss of past medical claims information for approximately 68,000 of its members that was stored on electronic media devices.
The recession has put more people on Medicaid and sharply increased state spending on the program, forcing state officials to cut costs even with help coming from the federal government through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
The National Governors Association's State Alliance for e-Health Tuesday issued a report, which is intended to give interim guidance to state leaders as they begin to implement the Health IT for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009.
With public attention in the United States focused on ways to reform the healthcare system, a publication from ABI Research examines wireless telehealth and forecasts that 15 million systems will be in use--mainly in North America--by early in 2012, and may serve as a means of cost savings.
Health & Human Services Secretary (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius has reported that $6 billion in new federal funds will be made available to states and U.S. territories for fiscal year 2009 to provide healthcare to millions of children across the United States through their Children's Health Insurance Programs (CHIP).
Only about half of Medicaid recipients age 50 and older appear to receive recommendations from their primary care physicians to undergo screening tests for colorectal, breast and cervical cancer, according to a report in the October 13 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.
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The use of health IT to reduce rehospitalizations will be welcome but also disruptive, said Stephen Jencks, an independent consultant in healthcare safety during a Feb. 24 webinar on the potential use of health IT to mitigate rehospitalizations, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
During the Health IT Standards Committee meeting on Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C., the Clinical Operations Workgroup sought to gather comments on proposed recommendations on implementation specifications for content exchange, vocabulary and code set standards for the Interim Final Rule of meaningful use.
In 2006, the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), a branch of the FDA, began examining the number of medical device reports they received. Over the past two years, the number of submitted reports has increased, sparking a demand for the CDRH to make a move to electronic reporting.
A new hospital breaking ground usually isn’t breaking news. But the vision of patient care at one new facility, tentatively named Palomar Medical Center West (PMC West), is currently illegal under California state law.