EDS has been awarded a $209.9 million, six-and-a-half-year contract to upgrade and continue to maintain Indiana's Medicaid Management Information System. EDS will continue as fiscal agent to the state and its 27,000 healthcare providers, who care for more than 800,000 recipients. Through the contract, EDS will provide a Web-based tool that will enable healthcare providers to electronically enroll in Medicaid programs.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has proposed restrictions for the coverage of cardiac CT angiography. Under the restrictions, Medicare beneficiaries can only receive reimbursements with two clinical indications of coronary artery disease under the coverage with evidence development process.
The American Health Information Management Association's Foundation of Research and Education has launched a new project focused on electronic health records and other information technology for use in nursing homes. The project will help enable post-acute and long-term care vendors and providers to develop and implement EHRs and healthcare IT products that will be functional in the emerging interoperable nationwide health information network.
An appropriations bill passed by the House and Senate and signed by President Bush leaves the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology with a budget of $61.3 million for the current fiscal year--the same amount it received for fiscal 2007. Asked about the ramifications of working with a flat budget rather than the much larger one the administration had requested, the national coordinator for health IT said it means the ONCHIT will not be able to accelerate in the ways it had hoped or start certain new projects.
As part of a multimillion-dollar information technology strategy, Seattle-based HMO Group Health Cooperative offers members the ability to email their doctors. Group Health representatives say the initiative has the potential to produce significant cost savings from greater efficiency and better medical care.
Verilogue, a technology startup company, has software that analyzes the real-time patient-physician interactions, compiles a verbatim transcript, and puts the recording and transcript in a database that Verilogue clients in the healthcare industry will use to learn what doctors and patients actually say to each other about diseases and medicines. The findings will be used for medical research.