This article from iHealthBeat mentions the recent release of a primer on cybersecurity (PDF) by the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI). It notes that healthcare data compromised in the first four months of this year (2015) is almost triple that of the five preceding years (2010-2014). It provides a brief overview of […]
This article from the Harvard Business Review website paints an intriguing of picture of the future of healthcare delivery when data collection (think Fitbit, Apple Watch, and more elaborate devices) becomes more pervasive and is aggregated such that it is fully available to both patients and providers alike. The authors postulate two […]
This article from the EMR & HIPPA website discusses the issue of interoperability – its causes and potential benefits if more fully realized. It specifically calls out a promising solution, the uses of the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR and pronounced fire). FHIR is a proposed standard from the Health […]
Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) are a crucial piece of the solution to the healthcare interoperability problem – the lack of data sharing among healthcare information systems. This article from HealthIT.gov, the website from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), is an excellent to introduction to […]
Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are the latest attempts by payers, particularly the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), to curtail the growth in healthcare spending and improve outcomes. This article from Government Health IT discusses the recent CMS ruling on updating the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP). This article […]
This article from the Kaiser Family Foundation is an excellent overview of the myriad ways that Medicaid delivers and funds healthcare to beneficiaries. It provides brief descriptions on the alphabet soup of plans such as primary care case management (PCCM), managed care organzations (MCOs), prepaid health plans (PHPs), patient-centered medical […]
This article from Government HealthIT provides seven thoughts on approaching implementation of ICD-10 before the October deadline. It advises against adopting the traditional project management approach and just doing it. Among the tips offered are: Adopt daily status meeting and eschew traditional project planning Implement quick-hit initiatives Create cross-functional teams to […]
This article from the Healthcare Informatics website discusses the challenges of migrating from the ICD-9 code set to ICD-10 code set. This results primarily from the added complexity and granularity of the ICD-10 code set, which means that a specific ICD-9 code may map to multiple ICD-10 codes (since the ICD-10 […]
Well, we all have to start somewhere, and this is my first blog post. My intention is start a blog on focusing on healthcare informatics and information technology. Along the way, I’ll be adding information on the healthcare in general (primarily on policy), project management, process improvement, and other articles […]
