implementation

The House is expected to take up legislation that would encourage the adoption of information technology in healthcare and establish national standards on privacy and the implementation of new systems. HR 4157 was sponsored by House Ways and Means Committee Chair Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-CT) and Rep. Nathan Deal (D-GA). Critics note that the new privacy standard would take precedence over existing state law in many cases. CQ HealthBeat reports that the legislation would increase the number …

The Michigan-based Trinity Health System says it is temporarily stopping its $315 million electronic medical records implementation. The effort, dubbed "Project Genesis," will eventually upgrade IT services at 23 Trinity-operated hospitals. No word on exactly what is going on, but Trinity says the pause is so the system can study the project's impact on "clinical processes for disease conditions." Says PR guy Kevin DiCola, "we'll be so much better with our implementation by taking a step …

The UnitedHealth Group said its fourth quarter profits were up 18 percent as quarterly revenue rose from $12.05 billion from $10.51 billion. The company, which is the nation's second largest insurer, raised its earnings forecast for 2006, predicting earnings of between $2.85 to $2.90 a share. Wall Street wanted more; shares of UnitedHealth were down nearly two percent this morning.

Not all analysts are equally optimistic about the company's near-term future. Several note that its …

Critics have argued for years that healthcare IT systems pose unusual risks. Many have wondered what happens if a programming mistake causes important patient data to get scrambled. That's exactly what appears to have transpired in the UK, where a bug in the NHS version of the iSoft iPM patient administration system appears to have created the potential for potentially serious clinical mistakes. Far from being an isolated issue, the problem appears to be fairly widespread, affecting …

Problems continued with the implementation of Medicare Part D, as more states said they are experiencing difficulties with the new prescription drug benefit's roll-out. At least six states are now offering recipients aid to help them to purchase needed medicines and others appear ready to launch similar programs. In Massachusetts, there were reports of patients being turned away from pharmacies, despite a pledge by state officials to cover the costs of all prescriptions. 

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A new article in the December issue of Pediatrics finds that mortality rates at a major academic hospital more than doubled last year after the implementation of a commercial computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system. The study, which was conducted at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, found mortality increased from to 2.8 percent to 6.57 percent. Researchers attribute the jump to the problems doctors and staff had in adjusting to the new system. Criticism of the steep …

A new piece published in the British Medical Journal takes a long, cold look at a failed EMR implementation at one of Kaiser Permanente's Hawaii hospitals. The qualitative study, which was partly conducted by Kaiser researchers, examines the attempt to install the Clinical Information System (CIS), an electronic medical record system co-developed by Kaiser and IBM in the 1990s. The failure of the Hawaii implementation came at a time when numerous Kaiser regions were going …

National Consumer Health Privacy Survey 2005
The California Healthcare Foundation has published a study by Forrester Research updating a study from 1999. Two-in-three Americans are concerned about their health information's confidentiality despite the implementation of HIPAA. One-in-eight takes active steps to protect the privacy of their health information, while more than half are concerned that employers might use their health information against them. But 59 …

An error in the Medicare and You handbook mailed out to millions of Americans may lead some people to apply to prescription drug plans they will be unable to afford. CMS officials sent out a memo detailing the problem yesterday. According to the agency, the handbook erroneously states that low-income beneficiaries will not have to pay any monthly premium. That is only true of some plans, however. Democrats were quick to attack the mistake, calling it more evidence of how …

Larry Augustin is CEO of MedSphere, a Southern California health IT company which hopes to ride the open source wave to success as the government funds physician implementation of the electronic medical records software it specializes in. The former head of VA Linux, a company whose shares were briefly valued at over $200 per share at the height of the dot-com boom, has been the focus of attention before. Some experts think MedSphere is well-positioned to take advantage of physician …