Remember that the two things you don’t want to watch being made are sausage and law. Then recall that while the process for both may be unappealing and seem incongruous, the product is not always so. Take the 21st Century Cures Act, for example, which is a lengthy (996 pages) piece of legislation (summary here) that focuses primarily on health-related scientific research and medical devices. It also broadly outlines the terms for an upcoming drawdown of America’s strategic petroleum reserve,
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Why Digitized Mental Healthcare is Better Mental Healthcare
If community hospitals are a general barometer of health in the surrounding area, the emergency room is the canary in the coal mine. Viral outbreaks, increases in violence, loss of health insurance from local layoffs—all are social ills that make their presence known first in the ER.Based on recent ER studies, the U.S. is on the cusp of a full-blown mental health crisis.According to a recent survey of more than 1,700 emergency physicians by the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP),
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Urgency, Responsibility, Not Digital Health Devices, Will Improve Patient Engagement
We will get to a point in the not-too-distant future where EHRs are a great deal more functional and user friendly, where APIs link most if not all healthcare IT platforms and clinical devices, where personal wearable technology enables remote monitoring of patient condition.These are largely technical challenges with some policy mixed in that can be solved through improved technology and targeted incentives. In the meantime, as technology progresses, American healthcare faces some more
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5 Key Issues Plaguing the American Mental Healthcare System
Representative Tim Murphy’s Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis bill was approved by the House with near unanimity in early July. Among other objectives, the legislation seeks to expand the availability of psychiatric hospital beds, create a new assistant secretary for mental health and substance use disorders at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and promote early treatment and intervention for young people who show signs of mental illness.What this long overdue legislative
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How Can We Commit To Better Mental Healthcare Right Now?
Restoring lost beds, expanding health IT incentives and rapidly embracing ACOs are steps forward in addressing America’s mental health crisisChances are good someone close to you is suffering from a mental health disorder right now. You may not know it. While paranoid schizophrenia is pretty obvious, major depression can be hidden during periodic interaction.Chances are also good that you don't have the knowledge or resources to deal with an extended bout of mental illness suffered by a family
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Shouldn’t We Have A Human Genome Project for Mental Illness As Well?
Success in understanding, treating and preventing specific diseases has often resulted from concentrated research initiatives backed by strong sponsors and robust funding. A great example: the extraordinary 13- year long national Human Genome Project (HGP) that not only achieved its goal of mapping the genes in human DNA, but also unearthed the genetic roots of many diseases. Jointly undertaken in 1990 by the Department of Energy and the National Institute of Health, with a total cost of $3.8
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Why Your Patient Portal Strategy Should Embrace Both Consumers & Patients
Patient engagement is easy, right? Just create a portal and tell patients it’s there.Of course, no one who puts a little thought into this idea believes it can be so simple. Healthcare isn’t “Field of Dreams,” after all. We can build it. They still might not come.But we still need to try and understand why, as this 2014 Health Affairs study found, the increased use of EHR technology has not created a parallel increase in electronic communication among patients and clinicians. In short, if
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Should Hospitals Consider Getting Cybercrime Insurance?
Naturally, most of what you hear from healthcare IT companies about their products is going to be upbeat, designed to create a sense of potential and promise. I mean, I can easily extol the virtues of the company I lead and the products and services we sell.But if I’m responsible and realistic, I also need to call attention to the challenges healthcare IT can create on the path to improved care. Without doubt, any information technology that creates, maintains, or transmits electronic patient
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Newsflash: Healthcare Does Not Spend Enough on IT Data Security
Mathematically, the gap between $3.6 million and $17,000 is a chasm.This is something you know well if you’re Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, which paid the latter number to unlock patient data held hostage by malicious hackers using ransomware when the former number is what the hackers initially asked for.While the dramatic reduction in ransom may have caused Hollywood Presbyterian to breathe a sigh of relief, there is no reason they or you should feel comforted. Consider this an initial shot
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Is CMS Efforts Enough to Transform Rural Healthcare?
Imagine you’re living in Brooklyn and you have a medical emergency. If the hospital nearest you, say Lutheran Medical Center, were to close, you could go to Maimonides or New York Methodist a short taxi or ambulance ride away.
Now, let’s say you’re badly injured and you live outside rural Tulare, California, in one of the most productive agricultural counties in the U.S. If Tulare Regional Medical Center went away, you might have to life flight to Bakersfield, Los Angeles or the Bay Area.
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