Six healthcare systems in the Milwaukee area are each putting in the building blocks needed for electronic health records, and that work could accelerate in the next few years. So far, they have spent more than $200 million on the effort, and they could spend hundreds of millions more to complete and refine their systems. Aurora Health Care alone estimates it has spent $150 million in the past decade on EHR projects.
A new construction project at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin shows that the advances in medicine also apply to buildings. Children's Hospital’s $165.9 million tower, its third major expansion since 1988, initially will add 58 beds. But the tower includes two floors of space for an additional 72 beds when needed. The size and design of the patients' rooms in the hospital’s new tower are just one example of the advances: The rooms, designed for one patient and family, will be larger than those in the original hospital built 20 years ago.
GE Healthcare sells machines that discover why people are sick, and now its new chief executive, John Dineen, now must cure what ails the business. The division has been plagued by factory-production glitches that led to a federally ordered plant shutdown, an aborted acquisition, and shrinking insurance payments that has decreased demand for GE's products. The unit's operating profit fell 4% in the first half of 2008, and this summer the division laid off hundreds of workers.
Revolution Health Network plans to announce that it has merged with Waterfront Media, a publisher that owns several health Web sites. The $300 million deal would give the combined companies enough traffic in the United States to compete with WebMD, now the market leader in the online health category. The new company will operate under the name Waterfront Media.
In a ceremony at the State House, Gov. Carcieri signed the Rhode Island Health Information Exchange Act of 2008, which was written after the quality institute held dozens of meetings with consumers, providers, insurers, academics, employers, and others. The law establishes the rules governing the state's health exchange: it gives patients control over who sees their records, puts the Health Department in charge, requires a commission to oversee the exchange, and sets civil and criminal penalties for violating the law.
A seven-year, $32 million information technology plan to convert paper records into computer files is under consideration in Vermont, according to doctors and state health officials. The plan is focused on integrating electronic health records into the offices of half of the state's primary care doctors, according to Gregory Farnum, president of Vermont Information Technology Leaders. The VITL is a partnership tasked by the state General Assembly's Commission on Health Care Reform to take the lead in integrating technology into Vermont's healthcare system. The General Assembly's Commission has vowed to support a $1.2 million VITL appropriation in the state budget.