Doctors often say healthcare would be better if insurers didn't interfere in medical decisions. Now some Louisville and Lexington physicians have a chance to prove it.
The government is promising $45 trillion more than it can deliver on Social Security, Medicare and other benefit programs. That is the gap between the promises the government has made in benefits and the projected revenue stream for these programs over the next 75 years, the Bush administration estimated.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has named members of two work groups that will seek consensus on the definitions and use of five common health IT terms. The Records Work Group will cover the terms electronic health record, electronic medical record and personal health record. The Networks Work Group will focus on the terms Regional Health Information Organization and Health Information Exchange.
InnerWireless, a provider of in-building wireless technology, announced that it will deploy its PanGo location management platform in the University of Michigan Health System's medical campus. This platform will enable the pharmacy department to track and monitor hundreds of boxes containing emergency drug supplies throughout its 913-bed medical campus. Pharmacy will become the first department in the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based University of Michigan Health System to use a real-time location system by incorporating PanGo into the health system's existing Cisco infrastructure.
The Canadian House of Commons has passed emergency legislation to reopen the Ontario nuclear reactor that produces the majority of the world's supply of medical isotopes. The site was shut down for safety maintenance, and the bill required all party support to override the advice of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and restart the 50-year-old reactor.
According to a study only 20 RHIOs in the United States are fully functional and a dozen are self-sustaining. The study questions many of the prevailing assumptions about how a nationwide health information network will emerge.