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Quality studies proposed for children's healthcare

April 30, 2007 — 8:01pm ET

To date, virtually all of the major studies of healthcare quality have focused on care for adults, partly because children aren't prone to chronic diseases like diabetes whose outcomes can be measured easily. The gap in quality measures is particularly large when it comes to inpatient care, according to a study by the National Association of Children's Hospitals. However, a new bill being considered in the Senate would change the equation, budgeting $100 million over the next five years …

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HHS asks employers to push transparency

November 26, 2006 — 8:01pm ET

HHS head Mike Leavitt is asking employers to commit to a set of four goals which aim to make cost and quality data more accessible to consumers. The goals include adopting health IT standards in order to make health information systems interoperable, increasing quality transparency, increasing pricing transparency, and offering rewards to encourage efficient, high-quality care. HHS has begun to develop specific quality and cost specs for employers to use in implementing the goals. The …

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SPOTLIGHT: Hospital-at-home care has come of age

October 17, 2006 — 8:01pm ET

While the idea of providing hospital care at home dates back to the 1960s, it hasn't been widely implemented yet, particularly in the United States. But it's high time that U.S. healthcare providers take a closer look at this approach, particularly given the technology we have available to support remote patients, argues Vince Kuraitis of Better Health Technologies. Not only does home-based hospital care save money, it sidesteps the risk of hospital-acquired infections and keeps the …

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Study ranks TX payer performance

October 8, 2006 — 8:01pm ET

If you're a Medicaid provider in Texas, get ready to have your claims denied and your payments delayed. That's one of the conclusions drawn by a recent study of payers in Texas, conducted by physician practice management technology vendor Athenahealth. Athenahealth's Texas rankings, which analyzed claims performance for providers and medical practices from the second quarter of 2006, included 295,000 charge lines. Among other things, the study found that Texas Medicaid denied physician …

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SPOTLIGHT: Is P4P focusing on the right things?

July 20, 2006 — 8:01pm ET


Payers want good outcomes at low cost, but what do patients want, asks Kaveh Safavi, M.D., chief medical officer of consulting firm Solucient. In this article, which originally ran in the Journal of Healthcare Management, Safavi observes that patients expect good outcomes the way they expect safe plane travel, and they measure "good" performance in terms of doctor-patient communication and responsive nurses. In consumer-driven healthcare, non-technical criteria will take a front seat--but you have to have good outcomes, too. Article

Editor's Corner

May 4, 2006 — 8:01pm ET


In all the fuss about RHIOs, a few cynics have been quietly pointing out that as things stand in healthcare, there's no real incentives for plans and providers to make their data interoperable. And where there's no incentives for something to happen, it probably won't. So do RHIOs have a business model? No, at least according to an HHS-funded study by Avalere Health. Not one of the …

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Compliance programs help profits, patient care

March 12, 2006 — 8:01pm ET

The New York Times reports on compliance programs that are designed to get patients to stick to their drug regimens. These are both good for the patients' health and for pharmaceutical company profits, as many patients do not take all their prescribed drugs properly--especially for conditions for which symptoms are not obvious such as high-blood pressure. Several companies like McKesson and subsidiaries of manufacturers such as Pfizer Health Solutions have call centers …

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MEDecision goes after "claims-based" records

March 1, 2006 — 8:01pm ET

MEDecision will create 6.5 million "patient clinical summaries" for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois. The Pennsylvania-based software company was involved in the effort to create emergency clinical records after Hurricane Katrina. MEDecision President John Capobianco explained to FierceHealthcare at HIMSS that while less than 20 percent of providers currently use EMRs, their technology can mine claims in real time to create basic records for emergency room care, or to support …

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Editor's Corner

February 23, 2006 — 8:01pm ET


More encouraging news about ePrescribing this morning as the Henry Ford Health System (and its subsidiary Health Alliance Plan) is trumpeting its successful implementation of a system backed by PBM giant Medco and the big auto makers. As expected, ePrescribing reduces medical errors and increases the use of generics (and hence lowers drug costs for payers). That's why ePrescribing is …

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ALSO NOTED:

January 2, 2006 — 8:00pm ET

> A serious bird-flu epidemic breaks out and spreads worldwide.

> Significant numbers of physicians stop taking Medicare after a fee cut.

> Bankruptcy of major for-profit hospital systems.

> A malicious virus infects a significant number of medical devices causing patient deaths due to inaccurate readings.

> The FDA regulates health information software.

> An outbreak of a hospital-centered bacterial infection, such as MSRA, becomes a …

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