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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.
From reducing medical errors, increasing the quality of care and promoting wellness to improving efficiency and reducing costs, a new survey from Gallup on the behalf of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that a majority of healthcare opinion leaders believe nurses should have more influence on health systems and services.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will be handing out individual grants for up to $3 million to states and health systems to implement and evaluate models and methods to improve patient safety and reduce medical liability.
State CIOs and IT executives should establish themselves as key stakeholders in the development of state health information exchanges (HIE), according to a report issued by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO).
The Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Wednesday passed the Affordable Health Choices Act (AHCA), a bill designed to provide affordable healthcare in the United States. The bipartisan bill includes more than 160 Republican amendments accepted during the month-long mark up.
While the U.S. healthcare reform debate battles on, one issue emerging at the forefront is whether a reform package should include medical liability system reform--an oft-cited whipping boy for rising healthcare costs, according to a perspective published online June 15 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
PROVIDENCE, R.I.--John Glaser, PhD, senior special adviser for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, gave EHR advocates hope of being one step closer to obtaining federal health IT incentives with his announcement that the first definition of meaningful use would be released next week.
As policymakers consider ways to cut health costs as a part of healthcare reform, a new survey of U.S. physician practices finds that physicians are spending, on average, the equivalent of three work weeks annually on administrative tasks required by health plans, according to a study published online May 14 in Health Affairs.
Thursday, May 07 2009
GE today launched a new healthcare business strategy, healthymagination, dedicating $6 billion to preventive care and consumer-driven initiatives. The new strategy was announced in a live webcast, hosted by Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO of GE.
Researchers have found that insurance coverage may not only affect a patient's access to healthcare, but also the quality of care they receive, which may have implications for the U.S. debate on healthcare reform, according to findings presented April 25 at the American Urological Association's (AUA) annual meeting in Chicago.
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One of the arguments that President Obama has made in favor of healthcare reform is that the same kind of insurance system available to him and members of Congress should be available to all Americans.
Nearly three-fourths (74 percent) of U.S. health executives polled for a survey on the impact of technology in healthcare reform agree or strongly agree that the American healthcare system is in a “state of crisis,” according to a report by StatCom.
An opinion piece in the September issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology lambasted the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for its decision denying coverage of CT colonography (CTC) for colorectal cancer screening.
America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) has released a report—prepared by Dyckman & Associates—showing that some physicians are charging patients “startling fees” for a wide variety of medical treatments and services received out-of-network.
The ultimate goal of an EHR that exemplifies meaningful use is to enable significant and measurable improvements in public health through a transformed healthcare delivery system, according to the Meaningful Use Work Group, which presented its first recommendations today on the evolving definition to the Health IT Policy Committee.
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.
Physicians can and should play a leading role in achieving healthcare reform, according to a perspective published online May 21 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The majority of U.S. families who are not covered by group health insurance through an employer cannot afford to buy health insurance, according to a study funded by the Department of Health & Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
Congressmen Mike Thompson, D-Calif., Bart Stupak, D-Mich., Lee Terry, R-Neb., and Sam Johnson, R-Texas, have introduced bipartisan legislation that would expand Medicare reimbursement to more facilities in urban and suburban areas for the use of telehealth equipment and services.
CHICAGO—The U.S. healthcare system needs to quickly implement widespread, systematic reform to improve patient outcomes and reduce massive costs, which are currently approaching 20 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), according to George C. Halvorson, chairman and CEO of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals.
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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.