News From Around the Web
> The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives announced three new members to its board of trustees on Friday. Included among the board members is FierceHealthIT Editorial Advisory Board member Indranil Ganguly, vice president and CIO at CentraState Healthcare System in Freehold, N.J. Announcement
> Kaiser Permanente this week is informing an unknown number of patients about a data breach that occurred May 16. The breach involved an employee emailing a spreadsheet associated with a wellness screening competition to a pilot planning team member who was not employed by Kaiser. According to the letter, while no information was shared regarding the screening results, information in the email included first and last names, medical record numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, employer names, department names and appointment dates and times. Letter (.pdf)
Health Finance News
> Spending on healthcare services continued in its historic slow growth mode during July, although job creation in the sector performed better than in recent months, according to data from the Altarum Institute. Altogether, healthcare spending grew 3.9 percent during the month when compared to July 2012. Healthcare as a share of gross domestic product was at 17.5 percent, essentially unchanged since 2009. Article
Provider News
> Doctors are crucial to hospitals' marketing and social media strategies but organizations across the country struggle to get their physicians to use social media. Although industry experts often point to doctors' busy schedules as the reason behind their reluctance to join their hospitals' social media campaigns, Russell Faust, M.D., told MedCity News he surveyed physicians last year and found fear of the unknown, HIPAA violations and developing a negative reputation also fare actors. Article
> Researchers in England have found that patient assessments of quality of care do not correlate closely with clinical measures of quality. The researchers used both clinical performance and patient experience data to analyze 7,759 physician practices. While they did find statistically significant positive correlations between patient assessments and clinical performance assessments, the association was weak. Article
And Finally... Tough love was a little too tough for this floppy-eared guy. Article