Would you pay top dollar for anything—a car, phone, television, whatever—that promises truly transformational technology at some unspecified future date?I doubt you would. We generally buy products for what they offer now, not what the company says they will eventually do (vaporware, as IT calls it).And yet, so many hospitals pay multi-billions of dollars for healthcare IT systems that promise to integrate patient care … eventually. Why? Some argue the primary reason is a false market that was
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An American Dilemma: Incarceration And Mental Health
It’s generally common knowledge that the United States incarcerates a higher percentage of the population (716 per 100,000 people) than any other country on earth. With just 5 percent of the world’s total population, the U.S. still has 25 percent of the global prison population.Especially in recent years, much ink has been spilt on how mandatory minimum sentencing and three-strikes laws have put thousands of non-violent, low-level drug offenders behind bars, creating prison overcrowding and
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5 Reasons Why the VA Should Not Replace VistA With A Commercial EHR
This post is sponsored by Medsphere Systems Corporation, the solution provider for the OpenVista electronic health record.The VA waitlist scandal of a few years ago was a dark period in the agency’s history. Fallout from the scandal reverberated through the media and claimed the job of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.Now, three years on, the push to reform the VA and prevent a similar situation continues. Naturally, the healthcare information technology (IT) tools employees use, including the
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Healthcare IT Pricing: Can A Commoditized Future Drive Down Costs?
Shopping for a laptop can be an extensive research project where the prospective buyer compares prices based on a host of features: Processor speed, monitor resolution, video card quality, etc.And when you go looking for a surge protector, do you engage in similar due diligence? Probably not. The differences between the various products are generally so minimal that price is the primary concern. The same is largely true for storage devices, monitors, random-access memory (RAM) and other products
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Parity Not Apparent: Mental Health Still Not Receiving Equal Attention
Getting legislation through Congress—often a monumental battle, as demonstrated by recent efforts to pass the American Health Care Act—is one thing. But implementing new laws may be a greater challenge simply because they require so much sustained energy and attention.Take mental health parity laws, for example.Congress passed the Mental Health Parity Act (MHPA) championed by Sens. Paul Wellstone (D-MN) and Pete Domenici (R-NM) in 1996. The law prohibits employee-sponsored group health plans
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Could Billion Dollar EHR Implementations Bankrupt The Country?
Earlier this year, Monmouth University conducted a survey to determine which issues were most important as the country transitions to a new presidential administration. Among all the potential concerns Americans now face, the issue that rises to the top is healthcare costs.How acute a concern is this? It’s significant enough that, when asked the open-ended question, “turning to issues closer to home, what is the biggest concern facing your family right now?”, 25 percent of respondents made it
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The Viability of Rural Healthcare Relies On Evolution
Choice can be a double-edged sword—we all want more of it, but with too many choices paralysis can set in. Choosing a physician or hospital, for example, in an urban or suburban area without some kind of recommendation can truly be a daunting task.But it beats having few or no choices. Increasingly, that’s the situation rural Americans find themselves in as the number of hospitals decreases and specialists stay in the cities.While this may have been the trend in rural healthcare over the past 10
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Best Practices on Achieving Patient Engagement & Having The Patience to Make It Work
When people in healthcare use the phrase ‘patient engagement,’ they mean involving patients more in their own care, perhaps urging them to be more responsible for their own health.From a costs perspective, this makes sense. No one argues that the healthcare system is not rife with waste and duplication, and much of the treatment would be unnecessary if patients paid attention to their health well before dramatic efforts are the only remaining option. Also unarguable is the impact healthcare has
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America Has A Rural Healthcare Crisis. Technology Can Help
As 2017 begins, around 81 percent of Americans live in urban areas, up from 79 percent in 2000. At the same time, urban and suburban areas where vacant land exists (so, not you, San Francisco) have been expanding, redefining what used to be rural. With this demographic shift comes a transition of resources and tax bases that leave rural areas and rural services, including healthcare, struggling to survive.Indeed, we can learn a lot about the state of rural healthcare from several access-related
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How Comorbidity Threatens American Healthcare
Comorbidity is not a word heard every day—not even in healthcare, where it applies. But researchers and physicians, assisted by IT-derived diagnostic data, have come to understand that comorbidity is essential to understanding and managing population health, especially among vulnerable populations challenged by mental illness and addiction.A patient with comorbidity has at least two chronic diseases at the same time that interact in such a way as to worsen the impact of each illness on the
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