Healthcare Policy Regulation & Reform | News, Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant

How Health Information Exchanges Will Drive ACOs

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 Editor's Note: This Q-and-A features Mark Caron, Senior Vice President and CIO of Capital BlueCross. SearchHealthIT.com HIT reporter Don Fluckinger sat down with Caron to discuss how health information exchanges (HIE), a significant component of meaningful use stages 2 and 3, fits into the changing landscape of health care payment models
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Organizing Health Information Exchange with Jonathan Gold, MD Catholic Health Initiatives

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 Jonathan Gold, MD, regional chief medical informatics officer for Catholic Health Initiatives, discusses his vision for organizing health information exchange and developing physician workflow in this interview with SearchHealthIT. Health information exchange is not just about establishing a repository of static data that sits and waits for people to access it. Instead, clinicians and health IT experts are considering ways that turn data into actionable, meaningful information that can be
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Focus on Standards Not Governance

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Written by John Tempecsco, Chief Marketing Officer at ICA Informatcs  There are many reasons why HIEs have not historically thrived.  During the CHINs of several decades ago, there were four major barriers to success.  First, the prevalence and acceptability of the Internet had not emerged, and the infrastructure to connect healthcare organizations within the community cost as much or more than the solution itself.  Second, there were very few clinical applications being adopted within the
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The High Cost of HIPAA Violations [Infographic Wednesdays]

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Infographic details some of the most serious penalties ever given by the federal government for the high cost of HIPAA violations. Security breaches have increased over 32% over the past year in healthcare organizations costing an estimated 6.5 billion dollars annually according to a study by the Ponemon Institute. Last week, the HHS office for Civil Rights issued its first enforcement action against the state of Alaska  settling with Alaska’s Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) for
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4 Ways to Improve Clinical Document Capture

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 Written by David McKanna, product marketing manager at Nuance “Business Week predicted the paperless office in 1975, when it was thought that computer records would completely replace paper.  In the next two decades after that pronouncement, paper use doubled.” This quote is taken from Persistent Paper: The Myth of “Going Paperless” from AMIA which provides a relevant list of reasons why paper is still widely used in healthcare.  Even fully electronic (Stage 7) hospitals still receive
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11 Reasons Why Our Healthcare System is So $&@%#! Up

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 Written by Jonathan Govette, CEO of ReferralMD describes 11 reasons why he feels the healthcare system is messed up and why Pardon the expletives, I have been wanting to share some thoughts and frustrations about healthcare system that I have seen arise over the last few years. The United States healthcare system is completely broken; it has become a huge money pit, with insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations and greedy lawyers at the bottom filling their pockets.  Mind you, I do
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How Patients Learn in the Digital Age [Infographic Wednesdays]

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Infographic that surveyed non-MD healthcare professionals of how patients learn in the digital age utilizing technology for patient education Sick with the flu and cannot find an available primary care physician? Chances are you are one of the 65 million Americans who live in an area that doesn’t have enough primary-care coverage, according to Health Resources and Services Administration. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, a projected 30 million more newly insured patients will enter the
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