Health Management Technology articles from December 2008

Health Management Technology archives from December 2008

'Tis the season.(From the Editor)(Editorial)
December 1, 2008... It's time to send a shout out to some folks who were instrumental in HMT's success this year. To Jodi Amendola, Jan Shulman and Kate Donlon, to Brad Dodge, Brian Parrish, Cathi Hilpert, Dave Anderson, Elizabeth Glaser and Elisabeth Henderlong,...

Prescription drug/health plan info online.(Briefly)
December 1, 2008... Dec. 31 is the deadline to review online the CMS 2009 Medicare prescription drug plan and health plan information, through the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan Finder and Medicare Options Compare. More than 5.8 million people with Medicare have...

Virginia wins national IT honors.(Briefly)(Virginia Information Technologies Agency and Northrop Grumman)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... A 10-year, $1.9 billion partnership between the Virginia Information Technologies Agency and Northrop Grumman to modernize the commonwealth's IT infrastructure has won two national honors in both information security and technology management...

Florida agency implements voice recognition.(Technology)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... The Florida Department of Children and Families are in the final stages of deploying voice recognition software for 75 percent of its field investigators. The concept is to provide the crucial notes on each case that forms the basis of future...

BCBS of North Dakota's patient care model.(Health Plans And Payers)(Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... The country's first state-wide patient-centered medical home initiative, known as the MediQHome program was recently announced by Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota (BCBSND) and MDdatacor Inc. The concept of the initiative is to provide...

Medicare trustee report released.(Health Plans, Managed Care)(Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services )(Report)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... The recently released annual Medicare Trustees Report by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) verifies that Medicaid spending will exceed growth in overall healthcare expenditures at a projected increase of 6.7 percent per year...

Significant ICD-10 implementation costs.(Physician Practices)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... A study conducted by Nachimson Advisors says that the costs and time constraints posed by the implementation of ICD-10 codes would result in dramatic costs increases for physician practices and clinical laboratories. The study also shows...

Study challenges findings linking uninsured and overcrowded EDs.(ED Overcrowding)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... A study titled "Uninsured Adults Presenting to U.S. Emergency Departments: Assumptions vs. Data" appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association contradicts the commonly held presumption that America's congested emergency...

Edith Dees, VP/CIO, Holy Spirit Health System.(Q & A: The Healthcare CIO)(Interview)
December 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Edith Dees is responsible for telecommunications and information technology (IT) at Holy Spirit Health System. Her division coordinates and oversees the continued development of IT services, including the...

Chrissy Yamada, CFO, CPA Senior Vice President, Finance Evergreen Healthcare.(Q & A: The Healthcare CFO)(Interview)(Cover story)
December 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Chrissy Yamada came to Evergreen after 15 years at Northwest Hospital, located in Seattle. Yamada started at Northwest in the role of Controller and was later promoted to Chief Financial Officer. Prior to joining...

Maintaining HIS performance: distributed caching provides scalability that can relieve overloaded server farms and re-invigorate listless systems.(Hospital Information Systems)
December 1, 2008... As Web and service-oriented architecture technologies become more popular, hospitals are adopting them rapidly for automating their operations and allowing their administrative staffs, doctors and patients to directly access the hospital...

Light speed data: a New York medical center utilizes fiber optics to leverage its extensive IT infrastructure for near-instant data transmission.(Data Management: Case History)
December 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Almost all businesses and industries have been transformed through technology to some extent in the past 20 years, but few have seen shifts as dramatic as those seen in the healthcare industry. Technology has...

Making the most of EBM: evidence-based medicine moves forward with clinical decision support.(Decision Support/EBM)
December 1, 2008... Evidenced-based medicine (EBM), the application of tested, measurable guidelines to the care of individual patients in clinical settings, is poised to transform the business of medicine. It reduces variability of care by encouraging physicians...

Content is king: a Minnesota Blue expands its Web presence and streamlines content management, reducing administrative burdens on IT.(Health Plans and Technology)
December 1, 2008... Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota (BCBSMN) is the largest health plan in the state, providing health coverage to more than 2.9 million members. By law, all health plans in the state are required to operate as non-profit organizations....

Safe and secure: a whole-disk encryption solution safeguards laptop data and simplifies data security management for a pediatric system.(Security: Case History)
December 1, 2008... Founded in 1908 and located in Denver, The Children's Hospital is a private, not-for-profit pediatric healthcare system that cares for kids of all ages and stages of growth. Its dedication to these young patients is evident in more than 1,000...

Risk-free EMR.(Products and Services)
December 1, 2008... The SmartEMR from EHI is a minimal cost/no-risk approach to electronic medical record (EMR) technology that features applications for scheduling, dictating new patients and new encounters, as well as a patient care application for keeping...

Nightingale offerings.(Products and Services)
December 1, 2008... The On Demand EMR from Nightingale is a Web-based system that can deploy across an organization hosted in house or in the company's enterprise class facilities. The system includes clinical documentation, point-of-care decision support,...

Video teleconferencing.(Products and Services)
December 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Through a partnership with HP, Tandberg offers the Halo Video Exchange Network, a global fiber optic network designed for video collaboration that facilitates company endpoint connections and requires no bandwidth...

Sage software.(NewsMakers)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... The Intergy EHR from Sage received high marks in a new list of leading U.S. ambulatory EHR and EMR solutions. The report, titled "Healthcare Provider Industry Short List: Ambulatory Electronic Health Records and Electronic Medical Records," was...

HealthEdge.(NewsMakers)(partnership with Oleen Pinnacle )(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Healthcare consulting firm Oleen Pinnacle is now an implementation partner with HealthEdge and its enterprise-class HealthRules software suite. Oleen Pinnacle's certified HealthRules deployment engineers are providing a full range of...

Concerro.(NewsMakers)(Alameda County Medical Center )(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Alameda County Medical Center (ACMC), located in Oakland, Calif., implemented the Web-based software-as-a-service from Concerro (formerly BidShift) to optimize the operational and financial management of their workforce. After one year of use,...

McKesson.(NewsMakers)(Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology )(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) announced its approval of Practice Partner Patient Records 9.3 from McKesson. CCHIT found the software in compliance with updated interoperability requirements and deems...

REACH Call.(NewsMakers)(MCG Health Inc. has invest in REACH Call Inc.)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... MCG Health Inc., a not-for-profit operating the MCGHealth Medical Center and several other facilities throughout Georgia, announced a $2 million investment in REACH Call Inc. to help the application services provider accelerate its growth,...

EHNAC.(NewsMakers)(Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission )(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... The Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC), a non-profit standards development organization and accrediting body, posted five new versions of program criteria for general public review and comment. Review participants...

Embracing change.(Thought Leaders)
December 1, 2008... Ten years ago I became CIO of CareGroup. On that day, I learned an important lesson about leading change. Just hours after getting the job I decided that we'd embrace a service-oriented architecture (SOA), standardize all desktop/server/storage...