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EIG 2013 as Told by Your Tweets
Infographic: Nominee Limbo
Will You Be Furloughed?
Boldly Go Where No Fed's Gone Before
AUTHOR ARCHIVES
John Pulley
John Pulley has written the Health IT Update blog since May 2011. Prior to becoming a regular contributor to Nextgov, he covered technology for Federal Computer Week and Government Health IT magazines. He has written about government for Federal Times and Air Force Times, as well. Pulley has worked in journalism for more than 20 years. He began his career covering local government for regional newspapers. In addition, he served as a writer and senior editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education for seven years. In 2006, he founded The Pulley Group, an editorial services agency.
Veterans Affairs broadens view of mobile devices
November 14, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
The Department of Veterans Affairs seeks a contractor to develop an application that will view images from the VistA electronic health record on mobile devices. In a request for information posted earlier this month on FedBizOpps.com, the VA said it wanted to expand mobile viewing of diagnostic images such as ...
Top 10 health IT hazards for 2013
November 13, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
Linking patient data to the wrong electronic health record is one of the top 10 health technology hazards for 2013, the ECRI Institute says in a new report. EHRs can “multiply the effects of such errors” far more than when similar data mismatches occur in paper records, the report contends. ...
Committee releases Stage 3 rules for electronic health records
November 9, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
A federal health information technology committee this week released its proposed rules for Stage 3 meaningful use of electronic health records -- the first step in a long public process of reviewing how the government assesses whether EHRs qualify for incentive payments under Medicare and Medicaid. Health care providers must ...
Disbursement of federal health IT incentives tops $7 billion
November 7, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
Federal funds continue to benefit health-care providers who demonstrate meaningful use of electronic health records. As of September, incentive programs have distributed more than $3.9 billion through Medicare, $3.5 billion through Medicaid, according to figures provided by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Providers in 16 states had received ...
Electronic filing simplifies review of Medicare payments
November 5, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
Electronic submissions are simplifying the process of providing documentation for Medicare payment reviews. Participation in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Electronic Submission of Medical Documentation system is growing. In the 12-month period ending Sept. 15, 85,000 medical records were transmitted electronically to review contractors. That equates to 5.5 ...
Veterans Affairs pushes telehealth expansion
November 2, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
The Veterans Affairs Department plans to double the number of veterans reached through telehealth next year, according a report released Friday by Government Health IT. A goal of the initiative is to better manage chronic diseases. The VA hopes to reach about 825,000 veterans through mobile health and telehealth by ...
Health IT at small-care providers under review
October 31, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
To see how health IT systems affect workflows, government-funded researchers are planning to descend on six small medical practices in Tennessee. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) says it wants to conduct the study because previous reviews of health IT and workflow have focused on large academic medical ...
Patients don't show much interest in accessing health data online
October 29, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
An off-the-cuff comment by an official from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services left open the possibility that a controversial requirement for electronic engagement by patients could be modified, according to news reports. The comment came during a question-and-answer session last week with Travis Broome, a CMS health-insurance specialist, ...
Hospital execs fail to measure return on IT investments
October 26, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
Hospitals do not adequately consider return on investment when measuring the success of electronic medical record systems, hospital executives said in a recent survey. Executives surveyed by Beacon Partners, a health-care management consulting firm based in Weymouth, Mass., expressed dissatisfaction with hospitals’ efforts to measure the return on investment of ...
Texting doctors turn off pagers
October 24, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
The incidence of texting while practicing medicine is on the rise. Unlike texting and driving, this appears to be a good thing. A small survey of hospital pediatricians indicated that physicians increasingly are communicating with one another via texts, which is slowly forcing traditional pagers to the wayside. Researchers at ...
