McKesson will handle all billing and collection operations for Lucile Packard Medical Group. The group includes the more than 650 physicians associated with Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, an academic medical center on the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto, CA. The medical group selected McKesson after a two-year evaluation. McKesson says more than 17,000 physicians use its revenue management services.
Hewlett-Packard has signed an agreement to purchase Electronic Data Systems for approximately $13.9 billion. With the acquisition, Hewlett-Packard said it expects to more than double its services revenue, which amounted to $16.6 billion in fiscal 2007. The companies' collective services businesses had annual revenues of more than $38 billion and 210,000 employees while doing business in more than 80 countries.
America Online founder Steve Case predicts that converging trends in public policy, technology and consumerism in healthcare will combine to simultaneously create disruption and opportunity, and ultimately lead to a revolution in American healthcare. Case, who now serves as chairman and CEO of Revolution Health, says that as a result, consumers need to overcome security paranoia much like they did in online financial transactions. He argues that once a secure, ubiquitous system is in place, patients and payors alike will be drawn to the financial efficiencies and clinical benefits of connected care.
National Health IT Week 2008 is scheduled for the week of June 9-13, 2008. Organizations with diverse perspectives on health and care will gather in Washington, DC, to work together with the goal of improving healthcare efficiency, quality, cost-effectiveness and patient safety through health IT. The event also coincides with several partner events, including HIMSS Advocacy Day.
Centralized health information systems have long served key functions like billing and admissions well, but have fell short on departmental clinical functions. Radiology needs to continue leading the effort for distributed but integrated systems, said Ronald L. Arenson, MD, during the opening session presentation at the 2008 Society of Imaging Informatics in Medicine Annual Meeting.
Although small, a survey of provider organizations, insurers and transactions processing vendors shows the industry is unprepared for the May 23 compliance date for the National Provider Identifier. The NPI rule requires that all providers and provider organizations that are HIPAA covered entities obtain a standard identifier to be used for billing and claims processing. Healthcare IT Transition Group, a consulting firm, put the survey together quickly after hearing many stories that complying with the NPI was “fraught with systemic flaws.”