Older Feds Aren't Playing to Their Strengths
Is It Too Hard to Fire Misbehaving Feds?
Americans Still Like the Postal Service
A Forced 4-Day Weekend for Many Feds
No More Tax-Cheating Feds, Senators Say
Video: The Daily Show on Apple's Taxes
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.
ONC Pushes Blue Button Web Tool for All Patients
August 13, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is seeking volunteers to help expand the federal government’s Blue Button Web tool for the Department of Veterans Affairs personal health record to all patients. Blue Button lets patients view and download their medical information in simple text format. “We need ...
Hackers hold health data hostage
August 10, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
While identity theft is the primary concern when the security of medical records is compromised, a disturbing new trend is emerging: hackers holding the data for ransom. A recent case involved the Surgeons of Lake County, a medical practice in Libertyville, Ill., where hackers were able to access electronic medical ...
Shipping Technology Keeps Operating Rooms on Track
August 8, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
The same electronic technology that helps freight companies constantly track their shipping containers and trucks can help surgery centers cut costs, one surgery executive says. Infrared (IR) and radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology allows a surgical center to track a patient electronically from pre-op to the operating room to recovery, says ...
VA Secures Health Data on Laptops
August 6, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
The Veterans Affairs Department hasn’t solved the problem of lost computers containing personal health information, but it has managed to contain the damage. Six years after a lost VA employee laptop compromised 26 million veteran health records, hard-drive encryption has at least made it difficult for would-be thieves to access ...
Surgeons Desire Cutting Edge IT
August 3, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
A new survey of hospital IT executives finds that health IT will be critical to hospitals trying to optimize use of their operating rooms, the “financial engine” of any hospital, according to one executive. Nearly eight out of 10 of those surveyed agreed that health IT is “a strategic driver ...
Mobile Health Records Don't Live Up To Vendor Hype
August 1, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
Mobile electronic health records aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, say two health IT executives who managed sputtering mobile EHR initiatives at their hospitals. When Northern California’s Sutter Health hospital system deployed a mobile EHR project for home health care in 2005, about 60 percent of the things that ...
South Nabs Largest Share of EHR Incentive Payments
July 30, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
The typical hospital receiving Medicare incentive payments to reward electronic health record implementation in 2011 was a large, urban acute-care hospital that tended to be located in the South. At least that’s what you get when you combine a series of findings by the Government Accountability Office, which reviewed 761 ...
Using Health IT to Ferret Out Fraud
July 27, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
Health IT is a key component of a new public-private effort to detect fraudulent health care billings, including a possible long-term effort to use data analytics to predict and find fraud. The initiative was announced Thursday by Kathleen Sebelius, who heads the Health and Human Services Department, and Attorney General ...
Health IT Attracts Venture Capital
July 25, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
Health IT companies raised $293 million in global venture capital from 61 investors in the second quarter of this year, according to a report released Monday by Mercom Capital Group. Both the amount raised and the 28 deals recorded during the quarter were the most recorded since 2010, Mercom says ...
Companies Flock to the Electronic Health Records Market
July 23, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
Any idea how many electronic health record vendors are out there? Even experts are surprised at the answer. The total, as ModernHealthcare.com IT Everything columnist Joseph Conn puts it, is “a horde, a herd, a whole Wild West stampede” of EHR systems. The numbers that surprised Conn came from Jodi ...
