San Francisco-based McKesson Corp. has announced plans to acquire MED3000, a developer of physician group management, billing, and revenue cycle tools based in Pittsburgh. This comes a week after McKesson announced that it had entered into an agreement to purchase MedVentive, a data analytics firm and provider of population and risk management tools for the healthcare industry.
October 2, 2012 | By Lawrence G |
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced it will collect $1.5 million from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary to settle HIPAA violation allegations. The HHS’ Office of Civil Rights started an investigation into the MEEI and its affiliated physician group Massachusetts Eye and Ear Associates in February 2010, after an unencrypted laptop computer was reported stolen.
September 20, 2012 | By Lawrence G |
The Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Veteran Affairs announced a demonstration of the standards for securely and responsibly sharing protected health information (PHI). Using standards defined in the Data Segmentation for Privacy Initiative, the HHS’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the VA were able to transmit treatment records for a fake test patient from one Electronic Health Records system to a different one,
September 18, 2012 | By Lawrence G |
A new Twitter app called MappyHealth has been developed to track diseases and can be used to identify health issues and possible outbreaks in a community. Developed in response to the NowTrending2012 application challenge sponsored by the HHS’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), MappyHealth is intended to help make social media data more accessible to local health departments.
September 17, 2012 | By Lawrence G |
In August, hackers corrupted the Web portal for Utah’s health insurance exchange and rendered the site inoperable for about ten days. The attack resulted in garbled words, blurry headlines, and some inaccessible Web pages on the site.
The online marketplace, where employers and employees can shop for health insurance policies, does have a database where personal and medical information is entered when requesting price quotes;
September 14, 2012 | By Lawrence G |
The University of Miami Hospital (UMH) has disclosed that two employees were accessing patients’ personal information inappropriately and may have sold it to a third party. According to officials at the hospital, the two employees, who were terminated immediately upon discovery of their activities, were taking data from “face sheets” used during patient registration.
September 13, 2012 | By Lawrence G |
A report from the Institute of Medicine suggests that science and technology could help to increase quality and efficiency and reduce costs in the U.S. healthcare system. The Committee on the Learning Health Care System in America, a panel of eighteen experts, was convened by the IOM to identify the challenges facing healthcare today and recommend solutions to improve these.
September 11, 2012 | By Lawrence G |
A recent survey found that 96 percent of medical practices are concerned about the potential impact of the transition to ICD-10, now scheduled for October 1, 2014. At the same time, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), as well as the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS),
September 10, 2012 | By Lawrence G |
A new survey from Medscape shows that 82 percent of physicians are using an Electronic Health Records system currently or in the process of implementing one. More than 21,000 healthcare providers from 25 specialties were surveyed by the WebMD-affiliated Medscape, and the results suggest that the federal meaningful use program is greatly responsible for the widespread adoption of EHRs.
September 5, 2012 | By Lawrence G |
The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) has been authorized to certify Electronic Health Records software through the permanent certification program. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) authorized CCHIT, along with four other organizations, to serve as certification bodies under the EHR incentive payment program.
September 4, 2012 | By Lawrence G |
