Health Management Technology articles from April 2002

Health Management Technology archives from April 2002

Supporting steerage. (From The Editor).(Editorial)
April 1, 2002... The first time I encountered large-scale steerage in a meaningful way was almost 20 years ago. My then employer had jumped on the cost-savings-through-managed-care bandwagon and was offering PPOs and HMOs along with indemnity coverage. ...

Reforms called for in final HIPAA privacy rules. (HIPAA).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... With transaction rules out of the way temporarily, new challenges are mounting against another set of rules under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. The Bush administration is receiving pressure from healthcare facilities...

IT workforce study to address HIM shortage. (Staffing).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) has commissioned a $500,000, multi-year study on health information management (HIM) workforce needs, shortages and salaries. The study will help affirm estimated shortages of...

IBM delivers memory-saving servers.(IBM eServer x330)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
April 1, 2002... IBM has introduced the first Intel[R]-based servers to make use of technology that can double memory and increase performance in memory-constrained environments. The new IBM eServer x330 marks the debut of Memory eXpansion Technology (MXT) that...

Money for HIPAA.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... President Bush included $64 million in his proposed 2003 budget for implementing HIPAA's administrative simplification provisions. This includes $9.6 million to ensure that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, as a health plan itself,...

HIPAA help for health plans.(TriZetto HIPAA Gateway)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
April 1, 2002... The TriZetto[R] Group, Inc. has launched HIPAA Gateway[TM], a new electronic data interchange product that receives, routes, stores and queries electronic transactions in compliance with HIPAA. The software converts health plan data into a...

Consolidations in Operating Room software. (Industry Watch).
April 1, 2002... On average, hospitals use operating rooms for only 57 percent of their capacity, but experience shows that good software can improve utilization to 80 percent-plus. This positive experience is helping boost demand for perioperative software, a...

Committed to connectivity; MedUnite creates an ATM-like network for thousands of healthcare providers and health plans. (Managed Care)(Cover Story).
April 1, 2002... Remember when we could only use automated teller machines (ATMs) affiliated with our home banking branch because all ATMs were not connected? Or worse, remember rushing to the bank before 3 p.m. on a weekday to get cash from a teller? Such is...

A chance to heal; home health agencies can improve patient care and increase profits with telehealth wound consulting. (Telemedicine).
April 1, 2002... At 2 p.m., a nurse consultant in a suburban Chicago office--a veteran Wound Ostomy Continence Nurse (WOCN) with years of specialty training and experience behind her--will guide a Seattle field nurse's examination of a pressure ulcer on the...

Tracking a decade of CIS; a vendor survey tracks 10 years of CIS use in the obstetrics department of a nationally renowned medical center with some stunning results. (Clinical Information Systems).
April 1, 2002... The California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) in San Francisco is a Sutter Health affiliate and one of the largest not-for-profit, academic medical centers in Northern California. CPMC is a tertiary referral center providing acute, post-acute...

High-tech, low-cost, huge results: health plan employs a technology-driven DM program that delivers big benefits for participating members. (Disease management: case history).
April 1, 2002... Can a disease management (DM) program save quantifiable healthcare dollars for employers while improving the health status of participants--without undue and expensive use of personalized one-on-one intervention? For One Health Plan,...

Patient-centric HIS: a healthcare information system based on a longitudinal patient record provides benefits to patients--and clinicians, administrators and IT staff as well. (Healthcare Information Systems).(Tutorial)
April 1, 2002... The pain felt by healthcare IT executives is not strictly a product of today's "front-and-center" crisis, be it HIPAA, bioterrorism, cost control or patient safety. The real pain is the certainty that the work they're doing today will need to...

Putting claims on the right path; medical care provider replaces manual processing system with an automated claims management system and reduces turnaround by more than 50 percent. (What works: claims coding/processing).(Patient First)
April 1, 2002... Many providers still depend on paper to process claims. They have systems and procedures that work well and a staff that is comfortable using them. When they finally make the decision to adopt an automated claims management system, they're...

Managed care hotlist.
April 1, 2002... MANAGED CARE HOTLIST Accordant Health Services, Inc. Circle Card Number 228 Website ...

Nice profile. (New Products & Services).(Physcape PracticeProfiler)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
April 1, 2002... PracticeProfiler is the first in a series of Web-based practice management applications from Physcape. The system allows practices to compare their coding and procedure utilization to practices similar in scope, size and location to find ways...

A service star. (New Products & Services).(Altary StarService)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
April 1, 2002... Altary has released StarService, software to manage the performance of health organizations' processes, preventing delays, mistakes, misunderstandings and misplaced information that negatively affect costs, revenues and the quality of care. The...

Color me happy. (New Products & Services).(Mitsubishi CP-900UM Color Video Printer)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
April 1, 2002... Mitsubishi introduces the CP-900UM Color Video Printer, designed for high-resolution and high-speed applications. With print speeds of just 10 seconds, the new sublimation thermal printer provides highly detailed images with sharp resolution...

Feeling rejected? (New Products & Services).(MedCompliance Validation Program)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
April 1, 2002... MedCompliance Inc. has released the MedCompliance Validation Program (MVP) a front-end editor that identifies miscoding of CPT/HCPC and revenue codes in a hospital's CDM (Charge Description Master). The program minimizes claims being rejected...

The FYI on the DPI. (New Products & Services).(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
April 1, 2002... Kyocera Mita America Inc., has introduced two new 600dpi printers designed for the wide format market. The KM-P4850w and the KM-P4845w both offer superior image quality and large paper capacity with support for a broad array of file formats....

A detective for hire. (New Products & Services).(Application Security AppDetective for Oracle 2.0)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
April 1, 2002... Application Security Inc. has announced the availability of AppDetective for Oracle, Version 2.0, an application security scanner designed to perform network-based penetration tests and vulnerability assessments. The system locates, examines,...

Rack it up. (New Products & Services).(Ergotron MD 101 and 102 monitor drawers)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
April 1, 2002... Ergotron has introduced two new products to their line of flat panel mounting solutions. The MD 101 and the MD 102 are monitor drawers designed for 19" rack-mount enclosures or frame systems. Flat panel monitors can be mounted to this system...

Check for prints. (New Products & Services).(Sony FLU-710 fingerprint identification unit)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
April 1, 2002... Sony offers the FLU-710 fingerprint identification unit (also known as the Puppy unit). This system is a credit card-size biometric device that uses a silicon-based capacitance sensor to capture fingerprint images. The unit performs all...

Open technologies and the quality of healthcare delivery. (Viewpoint).
April 1, 2002... The follow-up report on medical errors from the Institute of Medicine asserts that there is a "chasm" between the quality of care we have and that which we could have. Unlike the tremendous leaps in the life sciences and medical technologies...