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Tuesday, March 09 2010
The Virginia State Legislature this week approved a bill mandating health insurers, healthcare subscription plans and health maintenance organizations (HMOs) to fully cover the cost of healthcare services provided through telemedicine services.
Tuesday, March 09 2010
A survey from the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) found that 76 percent of respondents from mostly independent medical practices believe that the government should fully pilot test the 2013 and 2015 meaningful use criteria before requiring them.
Monday, March 08 2010
Image analysis and workflow solutions provider iCAD has been granted a patent-number 7,660,448, which will cover all future iterations of its SecondLook Digital computer-aided detection (CAD).
Friday, March 05 2010
In February, the Alliance for Radiation Safety in Pediatric Imaging expanded the Image Gently radiation dose initiative from CT and interventional radiology to computed radiography (CR) and digital radiography (DR) exams by hosting a Digital Radiography Summit at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University in St. Louis.
Friday, March 05 2010
The Certification Commission for Health IT (CCHIT) is confident about its prospects for becoming accredited after reviewing the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) regarding certifying bodies of EHR certification, according to Alisa Ray, executive director of CCHIT.
Thursday, March 04 2010
After two neurologists accused the Christiana Care Health System (CCHS) in Newark, Del., of misusing federal and state healthcare funds, CCHS has agreed to settle the suit for $3.3 million with the U.S. government and the state of Delaware.
Thursday, March 04 2010
E-prescribing in the U.S. witnessed an 181 percent increase as 190 milion prescriptions were routed electronically in 2009 versus 68 million in 2008, according to a report from e-prescription network Surescripts, in its 2009 progess report on e-prescribing. Of the 190 million, more than four million e-prescriptions were routed to mail order pharmacies.
Thursday, March 04 2010
“Ultrasound is the established modality of choice to evaluate the female pelvis, so why do patients with pelvic masses or pain get a CT scan? In my opinion, doing a CT scan first for female patients with lower abdominal pain is dangerous and wasteful, a drain of much-needed healthcare dollars,” wrote Beryl Benacerraf, MD, in an editorial published in the March issue of the Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine.
Thursday, March 04 2010
Kaiser Permanente has reported that every medical facility within the health system is now equipped with its HealthConnect, a private-sector EHR system.
Tuesday, March 02 2010
Pennsylvania-based biotechnology company Molecular Targeting Technologies has obtained a license from the University of Notre Dame for a novel sensing technology developed by Bradley Smith, PhD, Emil T. Hofman professor of chemistry and biochemistry, University of Notre Dame, that images cell death.
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Tuesday, March 09 2010
Partial adoption of meaningful use of health IT should result in the receiving of partial fiscal incentives, wrote Ted Epperly, MD, board chair of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), in a letter to Charlene M. Frizzera, acting administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Monday, March 08 2010
There is a real risk of inadvertent disclosure of personal health information (PHI) through peer-to-peer file sharing networks, although the risk is not as large as for personal financial information, according to an article published online in the March issue of the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association.
Monday, March 08 2010
Intermountain Healthcare will conduct the Speckle Tracking by Echo study, which will use advanced ultrasound technology to determine if asymptomatic diabetics are at risk for coronary heart disease.
Friday, March 05 2010
PETNET Solutions, a subsidiary of Siemens Medical Solutions, is preparing to distribute NaF-18 (sodium fluoride-18) through its network of 47 PET radiopharmacies in the U.S. in support of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) memorandum to allow for coverage with evidence development of NaF-18 PET imaging.
Thursday, March 04 2010
Joint Commission Resources, an affiliate of the Joint Commission, has launched a new consulting service that will provide an objective evaluation of technology with a patient safety focus.
Thursday, March 04 2010
A February report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on health information exchanges (HIEs) cited ways that sharing electronic personal health information about a patient has had a positive effect on the quality of care providers deliver to patients.
Thursday, March 04 2010
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is questioning whether the current proposed regulations in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) EHR Incentive Program allot enough time for providers to achieve meaningful use before they are penallized.
Thursday, March 04 2010
Project ProSPECTus is attempting to develop a new technology for next-generation SPECT imaging which will shorten imaging time, lower radiation doses, improve future diagnosis of cancer and the probability of successful cancer therapy while enabling a higher throughput of patients in hospitals.
Wednesday, March 03 2010
The use of at-home medical devices to connect doctors and patients via the internet can help patients and their physicians work more efficiently together to manage chronic conditions, according to research at Cleveland Clinic.
Tuesday, March 02 2010
William F. Jessee, MD, president and CEO of the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), will retire after 11 years of service in the fall of 2011; meanwhile MGMA said that it will soon begin the search for his successor.
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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.
When officials at Howard Memorial Hospital in Nashville, Ark., started drawing up plans for a new facility that opened in July 2009, Cindy York, the hospital’s director of radiology, had to make some decisions.