News From Around the Web
> The New York State Legislature voted to support New York's electronic health records system--known as the Statewide Health Information Network of New York (the SHIN-NY), according to an announcement from the New York eHealth Collaborative. The final New York State Fiscal Year 2014-15 Budget includes $55M in State funding for the SHIN-NY, "which will go toward building an innovative, public network in New York designed to give doctors and patients instant access to their complete health records, anywhere and anytime," the announcement stated. Announcement
Medical Imaging News
> The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has published the topics it expects to be discussed during the April 30 Medicare Evidence Development Coverage Advisory Committee meeting (MEDCAC) meeting looking at whether low-dose CT lung cancer screening should be covered by Medicare.CMS is particularly interested in evidence that can help identify those Medicare patients eligible to be screened; how often and for how long they should be screened; the characteristics of providers and facilities that might optimize benefits and minimize the harms of screening; and the precise criteria that can be used to identify a test as positive, the impact of false positive results and follow up tests or treatments. Article
Provider News
> Higher numbers of doctors and nurses in the intensive care unit (ICU) could increase survival rates of high-risk patients, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Nursing Studies. Researchers from the University of Greenwich examined whether the number of nurses, doctors and support staff affected the survival chances of critically ill patients in both the ICU and the hospital. Article
> Hospital reputations play an outsized role in both quality assessments and day-to-day operations, experts recently told Becker's Hospital Review. Article
And Finally... Why buy your own bulldog when you can rent? Article