Even though the overall U.S. economy is improving, let’s face it – the healthcare reimbursement system remains brutal. Many medical groups continue to struggle, looking for relief from the mounting pressures on their profitability. Declining reimbursements (60%); rising costs (50%); requirements from the Affordable Care Act (49%); and the transition to ICD-10 (43%) top the list of financial challenges that more than 5,000 physicians reported in the Practice Profitability
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Imprivata Acquires Biometric Patient ID Provider HT Systems
Boston-based health IT security company Imprivata announced today it has acquired HT Systems, the market leading provider of palm-vein based biometric patient identification systems, to enter into the emerging patient identification market, which Imprivata estimates to be approximately $2.0 billion globally. The acquisition of HT Systems and its PatientSecure® biometric patient identification technology supports Imprivata’s long-term vision to be the leading provider of
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Former Hospital CFO Ordered to Pay $4.5M for Meaningful Use Fraud
Former Shelby Regional Medical Center CFO, Joe White has been ordered to pay more than $4.5 million in restitution for his role in a meaningful use fraud scheme, KXXV first reports. White pleaded guilty for directed its EHR vendor, eCareSoft and hospital employees to manually enter data from paper records into the EHR system after the patient was discharged to meet the MU thresholds criteria. Additionally, White also made false statements regarding other hospitals had successfully converting to
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Connected Health Researcher Wins Google Wearables Healthcare Challenge
Professor Brian Caulfield, a connected health researcher from University College Dublin (UCD), has won the 2015 Google Wearables in Healthcare Pilot Challenge for his successful orthopedic rehab surgery platform project using mobile phones, Silicon Republic reports. The challenge held last week at Google’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts was organized by Medistro in partnership with MedTech Boston and Google.
Prof. Caulfield’s wearable orthopedic rehab support platform provides
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NextGen Launches Data-Driven Population Health Solution
NextGen Healthcare, a wholly owned subsidiary of Quality Systems, Inc. and a leading provider of healthcare information systems, services, and connectivity solutions, today has announced the launch of NextGen® Care, a new population health and care management solution designed to streamline the care team’s workflow, more effectively manage patient populations, drive better outcomes and decrease cost of care delivery mandated by evolving value-based payment models. The solution provides risk
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12 Things You Need to Know About Value-Based Reimbursement
Public and private payers, including Medicare and some of the nation’s biggest health insurers, plan to hasten the migration of the healthcare reimbursement system from pay-for-volume to pay-for-value. The acceleration in the pace of change from fee for service to risk-based reimbursement is likely to reshape the healthcare business over the next three to five years.
While all healthcare stakeholders will be affected, the pioneers of this approach to healthcare financing will be large,
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athenahealth, Epic and Medfusion Tops for Driving Patient Portal Adoption
A recent KLAS report finds vendors athenahealth, Epic and Medfusion are the most effective at helping their customers drive patient portal adoption. The recent KLAS report entitled Patient Portals 2015: Adoption beyond Meaningful Use reveals all three vendors having over half of their customers report that at least 20% of patients have accessed the portal--a number well beyond the meaningful use bar of 5%.
For the report, KLAS interviewed 186 healthcare provider organizations to determine
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eCaring, Samsung To Deliver Home Care Monitoring via Galaxy Tablets
eCaring, Inc. and Samsung Business Services™ today announced delivery of technology and services that enable healthcare providers to reduce costs, while enhancing the quality of patient care. eCaring’s care and disease management solutions will use Samsung’s advanced tablet technology and enterprise services to ensure 24/7 peak performance of all Samsung devices in the hands of patients and their healthcare aides.
The two companies will work together to streamline delivery of
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Report: Healthcare Interoperability Gets Failing Grade
A national physician survey of nearly 3,000 physicians who use the Epocrates medical reference app reveal that 95% of physicians have experienced a delay or difficulty delivering medical care because patients’ health records were not easily accessible or shared. The Epocrates study, prepared by athenahealth finds only 14% of physicians can actually access electronic health information across all care settings. Given the nearly unanimous frustration over the lack of helathcare
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Mercy, Rockwell Opens Telehealth Clinic For Employees
MercyCare Community Physicians and Cedar Rapids, IA-based avionics and IT systems provider, Rockwell Collins has partnered to build a telehealth clinic at 5070 Rockwell Dr. NE, which is set to open on April 20, according to The Gazette. The telehealth clinic will provide on-site health care to employees and their families on the company health plan through telehealth visits with remote Mercy physicians from three area clinics — in Marion, Blairs Ferry and downtown Cedar Rapids.
Two Mercy
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