AUSTIN, Texas -- The Obama administration is open to talks with Texas about expanded health care for the poor, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Thursday, though the state's top Republicans adamantly refuse to cooperate. Following a meeting with Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell and other Central Texas officials, Sebelius said her office is open to crafting a uniquely Texan plan to make sure everyone has health insurance. She was in Austin and San Antonio to talk about how local communities can take advantage of the Affordable Care Act. Texas has the nation's highest rate of people without health insurance — about 6.1 million people — most of them the working poor and single adults.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cleveland Clinic is expanding its reach once again, this time deeper into Northwest Ohio, where it will offer its expertise to the Toledo-based ProMedica health system. ProMedica, which operates 11 hospitals and more than 300 other health care facilities in Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan, will collaborate with the Clinic on improving the quality of patient care, reducing costs and making the services and programs it offers more efficient. The two organizations worked out details in a private memorandum of understanding signed earlier this month and announced at midnight Wednesday.
A dozen Maine hospitals face Medicare penalties in round two of the federal government's push to lower the number of patients who wind up back in the hospital within a month of being discharged. Compared to other states, Maine's hospitals ranked near the top, at seventh nationally by the amount of the average penalty. Nationally, Medicare will impose $227 million in fines on 2,225 hospitals by reducing their payments for a year starting on Oct. 1, according to an analysis by Kaiser Health News. The analysis describes the penalty program, which launched in October 2012 under the Affordable Care Act, as among the toughest of Medicare's efforts to pay hospitals for the quality of care they deliver rather than the number of patients they treat.
A security lapse by a vendor to Cogent Healthcare exposed the health information of 32,000 patients nationwide of doctors in physician groups managed by the hospitalist company. Brentwood, TN-based Cogent said it ended its relationship with M2ComSys, the vendor hired to transcribe care notes dictated by physicians. The lapse by the medical transcriptions firm left some of those notes, including protected patient health information stored on what was supposed to be a secured website, potentially publicly accessible from May 5 to June 24.
The use of interoperable electronic health record (EHR) systems to share information could eventually become part of reimbursement criteria in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, according to a new position paper from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The report, "Principles and Strategy for Accelerating Health Information Exchange (HIE)," states the government's principles in three categories: accelerating health information exchange, advancing standards and interoperability, and consumer/patient engagement. The strategies were informed by the stakeholder comments that ONC received in response to a request for information it issued earlier this year.
(Reuters Health) - Reminding uninsured people to get screened for colon cancer by sending them letters and calling them at home increases testing rates compared to asking them at doctors' offices, says a new study. Researchers found uninsured people in one Texas community were twice as likely to be screened if they were offered a colonoscopy free of charge by mail and over the phone. The same people were three times more likely to opt for screening when they were offered a stool test that needs no preparation and can be done at home, compared to those who received standard treatment.