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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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Why Obama’s Moonshot to Cure Cancer Is Unrealistic
Editor's Note: Larry Altshuler, M.D. is the author of Doctor, Say What?: An Insider's Scoop To Getting The Best Medical Care. He is a practicing Internist, Hospitalist and Integrative practitioner at a major cancer center in the Midwest.
In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama proposed a “moonshot” program to conquer cancer. Such a program is not new: in the wake of the euphoria of sending a man to the moon, in 1971, the U.S. government declared war on cancer. To a great
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What Is The Financial Impact of Value Based Healthcare for Physicians?
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is working hard to transition physicians’ payments from volume to value of services. The current Acting Administrator at CMS is a former top executive at United Healthcare, a commercial health insurance corporation. The previous Administrator at CMS is currently the president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), which is the dominant health insurance lobbying group. It may therefore behoove us to rephrase the opening sentence:
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Breaking into the Health IT Industry: The 2016 Unofficial Guide
Editor's Note: Cherie Lester is a Senior Healthcare IT Recruiter with Holland Square Group , a provider of technology and healthcare IT consulting, strategic staffing, outsourcing and professional search solutions. Lester has over 15 years of recruitment experience in the health IT industry and writes regularly about the job search and application process for HCIT professionals on her site, EngageMeHIT. Follow her on Twitter at @EngageMeHIT.
I receive multiple calls and
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How Predictive Analytics Can Combat the Zika Virus
Editor's Note: Damian Mingle is a data scientist with Nashville-based health analytics firm WPC Healthcare and has significant experience mapping the West Nile virus for communities struggling to contain the mosquito population that carries it.
The World Health organization recently declared a public health emergency in connection with the Zika virus outbreak. No locally transmitted Zika virus cases have been reported in the continental United States, though a recently diagnosed Virginia
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Can A National Patient Identifier Solve Interoperability Challenges?
Editor's Note: Thomas Grove is a Principal of Consulting and Compliance Services at Phoenix Health Systems, a division of Medsphere Systems. As a healthcare management executive with 20+ years of experience, Thomas has extensive expertise in strategic assessments and planning, revenue cycle management, and process improvement.
Many EHR components were developed as early as 30 years ago, but it wasn’t until 2009 that the federal Meaningful Use incentive program precipitated wide-spread
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Healthcare: Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object
Healthcare has been the embodiment of the irresistible force paradox, a classic paradox formulated as "What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?" We know that technology and empowerment of the individual have been the drivers of immense change in virtually every corner of our lives...except healthcare.
There are many efforts ranging from startups to convening thought leaders at events to public and private sector initiatives meant to change this dynamic. It’s clear it
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Connected Health Business Models for Smart Home Platform Players
Editor's Note: Harry Wang is the Director of Health & Mobile Product Research at Parks Associates. He is also the founder and lead analyst of Parks Associates’ digital health research program since its inception in 2006.
The smart home industry focuses on consumer use cases that charge a recurring monthly fee as the default revenue model for service providers. Equipment manufacturers usually earn revenues from product sales. Smart home platform providers can offer a
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Patient-Data Pipeline: The Missing Healthcare IT System Link
Part of today’s complexity in healthcare stems from the way our healthcare IT systems have emerged. There are multiple entry points for patients into the healthcare system, from a relationship with a primary care physician to the sporadic, disconnected and random interaction with emergency departments, urgent care and wellness clinics.
Based on current technology and the overall nature of the beast, it is highly doubtful that a single point of entry into the healthcare delivery system will
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As Health IT Matures, Security Approaches Must Mature With It
Not that long ago, healthcare worried mostly about the physical loss of personal health information (PHI) by way of a lost thumb drive, a stolen laptop, some misplaced paper files. These were the primary concerns in HIMSS initial security survey, published in 2008. It wasn’t until five years later, in 2013, that the largest healthcare security breaches came from cyberattacks instead of lost or stolen devices.
So, is it encouraging to see how far the rapid pace of change has carried health IT
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