Health Data Management articles from December 2004

Health Data Management archives from December 2004

Allow Me to Introduce You to the Coolest Hardware ... IN THE WORLD.
December 1, 2004... Hyperbole is a figure of speech I love to use when making a point. In fact, I think it's the greatest communication tool in the history of all creation. Which reminds me of the best title for a head of state I've ever come across-Emperor Of The...

Federal I.T. Czar, Vendors Size Each Other Up.
December 1, 2004... The nation's health information technology coordinator had a clear message about what he wants from health care I.T. vendors when he met 150 companies at the recent American Health Information Management Association's annual conference in...

Are Lawyers Hurting the I.T. Contracting Process?
December 1, 2004... Surgical Information Systems spent four months this fall negotiating an information technology contract with a prospective client. The contract was expected to have a base value of $1 million to $1.5 million-and cost the client $200,000 in...

Personal Records Could be a New Front in Diabetes Treatment.
December 1, 2004... One evening in mid-October, nine-year-old Gabriel Mathews had a blood sugar level of more than 400, way above normal levels of 80 to 140. Diagnosed two years ago with Type 1 diabetes, Gabriel and his parents tried to figure out why his sugar...

Feds Clarify Security Rule Date.
December 1, 2004... The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has clarified that the HIPAA security rule's compliance date is April 20, 2005. The final rule includes both April 20 and April 21 as the compliance date. Further, the centers has scheduled its...

FDA Approves Implantable Chip.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... The Food and Drug Administration has approved an implantable radio frequency identification microchip for medical use in humans. The grain-sized VeriChip from Delray Beach, Fla.-based Applied Digital is designed to enable physicians to have...

HHS Wants Ideas for I.T. Infrastructure.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... The Department of Health and Human Services plans to publish a request for information seeking ideas for the design and deployment of a national health information infrastructure. The department envisions the NHII as a set of tools and services...

IOM: Rural Docs Will Need NHII Help.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Congress should provide appropriate direction and resources to help rural providers adopt electronic medical records technology over the next five years, the Institute of Medicine recommends in a new report. While all communities in the United...

Nurse Informatics Groups Align.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Eighteen regional and national organizations have formed the Alliance for Nursing Informatics to represent more than 2,000 nurse informaticists. The American Medical Informatics Association and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems...

Rural Hospital Grants Available.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... The Health Resources and Services Administration will offer $15 million in improvement grants for small rural hospitals in fiscal 2005. Hospitals can use funding that will average $9,700 to assist in costs related to implementation of...

Vendor Buys into Records Market.(Business Computer Applications)(IMRAC Corp.)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Atlanta-based Business Computer Applications has acquired physician software vendor IMRAC Corp. of Nashville, Tenn., for an undisclosed sum. Business Computer Applications is a vendor of managed care information systems for payers and...

One Coding Firm Buys Another.(BTC Worldwide)( e-Coding Connection Inc.)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... BTC Worldwide, a Toronto-based vendor of medical coding services, has acquired Tampa, Fla.-based e-Coding Connection Inc., which offers similar services. Acquisition terms were not disclosed. Both companies are staffing agencies that employ...

AHRQ Opens Coffers for I.T. Adoption.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in the Department of Health and Human Services has awarded a total of up to $139.5 million in grants and contracts to promote the adoption of health care information technology. However, Congress...

QuadraMed Trims Leadership.(QuadraMed Corp.)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Michael Wilstead, president and COO of QuadraMed Corp., will leave on Dec. 31 as the company consolidates executive leadership. Lawrence English, chair and CEO, will assume the COO title. In August, English and Wilstead began to evaluate the...

Big Outsource Deal for CSC.(Computer Sciences Corp. )(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... St. Louis-based Ascension Health will outsource large parts of its information technology functions to Computer Sciences Corp. under a 10-year, $1.35 billion contract. El Segundo, Calif.-based Computer Sciences already manages I.T. operations...

New Leader at Park City Solutions.(Kenneth Rardin )(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Park City Solutions has named Kenneth Rardin as chairman and CEO of the Midway, Utah-based firm. He succeeds Terry Pitts, who will assist in the transition. Park City Solutions sells the emPOWERnet Web portal software and also offers a variety...

New Name for HealthScribe.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... HealthScribe Inc., a vendor of medical transcription software and services, has changed its name and will launch new products. The Sterling, Va.-based vendor now is Avicis Inc., and during the next year will introduce a suite of revenue cycle...

Security Vendor Gets New Identity.(Addamark Technologies Inc.)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... San Francisco-based Addamark Technologies Inc. has changed its name to SenSage Inc. and released an enhanced version of its flagship security information management software. The network monitoring and alerting software prioritizes security...

Group Wants Role in Certification.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society has created a vendor advisory council to offer input to the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology, which HIMSS formed this summer with two other associations....

Jury Rules Against TriZetto.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... A California Superior Court jury has awarded a third-party administration firm damages of approximately $1.85 million from The TriZetto Group Inc., a vendor of software for payer organizations. Associated Third Party Administrators of Alameda,...

Group Pilots Web Drug Histories.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Three Boston-area hospitals will test using Internet technology to obtain the medication history of patients in the emergency department. Emerson Hospital in Concord has started the pilot program; Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Boston...

Correction.
December 1, 2004... An advertisement on page 37 in the October 2004 issue and the inside back cover in the November 2004 issue contained an error. The location of the organization profiled in the Motion Computing ad, Jackson Clinic, was stated incorrectly. The...

Sharp Leaves U.S. PDA Market.(Personal digital assistants)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Sharp Electronics Corp. plans to discontinue sales of its Zaurus SL-6000 PDAs in the United States. The Mahwah, N.J.-based electronics vendor will continue to offer user support for Zaurus PDAs as well as supply products to existing corporate...

palmOne Introduces New Smart Phone.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Milpitas, Calif.-based palmOne Inc. has released a new version of its Treo smart phone. The Treo 650 features several enhancements to its predecessor, the Treo 600, which was released about a year ago. The new version includes integrated...

More Florida Docs Get PDAs, Drug Apps.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... About 400 physicians who provide care to patients enrolled in WellCare Health Plans Inc.'s Florida Medicaid HMO products will receive PDAs and point-of-care drug reference applications through a state-funded program. WellCare's affiliated...

Mobile Vendors Guide Updated.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Durham, N.C.-based BCC Consulting, a health care information technology consulting firm, has updated its free resource guide, "Going Mobile." The guide is designed to give provider organizations a framework for evaluating inpatient mobile...

Report: RFID Can Aid Health Care.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Tracking systems using radio frequency identification technologies can help provider organizations lower administrative costs and enhance clinical workflow processes, according to a recent report by Frost & Sullivan. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based...

PortNexus Partners for e-Prescribing.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Greenwich, Conn.-based PortNexus, which offers a suite of hand-held applications and Voice over Internet Protocol technology for physicians, has partnered with Schaumburg, Ill.-based Astonics to add e-prescribing capabilities to its system....

PDAs Find Home in Outreach Program.(Personal digital assistants)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Clinicians in Unity Health System's Health Care for the Homeless program will use PDAs to access a proprietary electronic medical records system while treating patients in the field. The Rochester, N.Y.-based provider has hired the PDA School...

Tablets Go Home with Nurses.(WILLCARE Inc.)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Home care nurses at WILLCARE Inc., Buffalo, N.Y., will use Tablet PCs to collect, update and manage patient information. This spring, the caregivers will begin using Tablet PCs loaded with the VividPoint mobile application from Atlanta-based...

Provider on the Hunt with RFID.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Monongahela (Pa.) Valley Hospital will deploy radio frequency identification-based software and technology from Patient Care Technology Systems, Aliso Viejo, Calif., to better manage patients and equipment in its emergency room. The 253-bed...

NIH Funds RFID Clinical Study.(National Institutes of Health)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Radianse Inc. has received a $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, Washington, for a study of its radio frequency identification technology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The Lawrence, Mass.-based vendor's...

Clinical Apps Bound for Hand-helds.(McGraw-Hill Professional has released PDA version)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... McGraw-Hill Professional, a unit of the New York-based McGraw Hill Companies, has released PDA versions of four of its clinical titles. The titles include: * CURRENT CONSULT Medicine 2005, a review of 850 disorders and 550 diagnoses. ...

Stock Chart.(Illustration)
December 1, 2004... (part 1 of 3) Price Price as on a % of 52 Health care software companies 11/8/2004 Wk...

True Value the Goal for Computer Hardware.
December 1, 2004... Beauty, as a term used to describe computer hardware, usually references function: if the technology works, it's a beautiful thing. But it also can be literal. Sometimes the package matters. At Mercy Health System of Oklahoma, nurses...

Payers Driven by Infrastructure.
December 1, 2004... Even the best laid I.T. plans can go awry if a key vendor decides to sunset a product. For Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield, such an event set off a chain reaction that led to replacing or upgrading both its hardware platform and claims...

For Some Providers, Thin Is In.
December 1, 2004... Several years ago, Wellspan Health needed to replace some 400 dumb terminals and a large number of decrepit PCs. Combined with Microsoft's restructured application licensing philosophy, the two-hospital delivery system in York, Pa., was facing...

Devices Add Feet, Subtract Footprints: Hospital cuts costs by converting to system with multifunction machines for faxing, printing and copying.
December 1, 2004... Today's I.T. riddle: How did Hutcheson Medical Center add feet but leave fewer footprints? Answer: A document management system based on hardware that consolidates printing, faxing and copying functions into one device. Eighteen months...

Expanding the Mobile Menu: Delivery system enables docs to link to clinical data via PDAs or cellular networks.
December 1, 2004... For almost two years, doctors at Riverside Health System in Richmond, Va., have been able to download patient data onto PDAs by synching them with the hospital information systems at Riverside Health's three hospitals. They've been carrying...

Who Should Buy Mobile Hardware?
December 1, 2004... Organizations purchasing PDAs and smart phones-originally marketed and sold to individual consumers-for employees to use on an enterprise scale is a trend that's reaching across industries. About 32% of PDAs purchased in 2003 were bought by...

Provider Watches its Back with Disk Array: Delivery system uses a disk array and enterprise management software to support backup and recovery process.
December 1, 2004... For the past few years, the server farm at Eastern Health System has been yielding bumper crops, which makes harvesting data that much more difficult for the delivery system. Birmingham, Ala.-based Eastern Health comprises three major...

Contracts Update.
December 1, 2004... The Contracts Update section includes announcements of contracts that health care information technology companies have signed with customers in recent weeks. Contract news can be sent to Health Data Management by electronic mail to:...

Advertiser Index.
December 1, 2004... (part 1 of 2) Advertiser 3M Health Information Systems Alcatel Avega Carstens CareTech Solutions Compulink Laserfiche Cybernet Manufacturing Dell Dictaphone Ergotron ESRI Facts and...

Do You Agree or Disagree?
December 1, 2004... "Hospital executives, including the CIO, commonly listen to the suggestions of physician I.T. champions and make changes to technological features or roll-out schedules as recommended. Do you agree or disagree?" AGREE Fred Lang ...