A majority of medical groups have not completed critical software upgrades for transition to HIPAA Version 5010 electronics standard, nor have they scheduled testing with health plans, according to follow-up research by the Medical Group Management Association. Medical practices face disruptions in claims processing and other essential administrative transactions if they don't successfully implement Version 5010 by the Jan. 1, 2012, compliance date. To assist physician practices with the transition, MGMA is calling on practice management system software vendors to intensify their rollout of compliant products, and on health plans to schedule testing. MGMA has also called on the government to develop contingency plans should the industry not be ready to meet the compliance date.
Patients at NYU Langone Medical Center no longer have to fill out the dreaded clipboard with their medical history or insurance data each time they come in for care because the Manhattan academic medical center has switched to palm recognition technology to identify and authenticate its patients. NYU Langone said that it went live June 5 across its enterprise with a product called PatientSecure, from Tampa-based vendor HT Systems, that scans the veins in the palm with near-infrared light. Citing statistics from the vendor, Bernard A. Birnbaum, MD, senior vice president, vice dean, and chief of hospital operations at NYU Langone, said vein recognition is 100 times more accurate than fingerprinting. "It had the highest accuracy and highest usability of any biometric technology we looked at."
Hundreds of Maryland residents every year — whether by design or circumstance — had their bodies turned over or given to the state anatomy board for science. They will share a final resting place, cremated and placed under a single grave marker in a field at the Springfield Hospital Center in Sykesville. Monday, mourners will gather as 600 more boxes of ashes are buried, joining 20,000 others, in a mass burial held every year in June. "The state has a duty to provide a dignified disposition of a body, with humanity," said Ronald S. Wade, director of the state anatomy board. "I'm a big believer that at some point, rest in peace." Many of the people buried in Sykesville, their family histories, and sometimes even their families, lost. They all have stories, and though most will be buried with them, perhaps forever, survivors say they are grateful for the respectful end.
Obama administration officials unveiled a plan to improve our nation's prosperity. No, not with more jobs, but by helping Americans stay healthy at every stage of life. But first, they got a workout congratulating each other on a job well done with the National Prevention Strategy, a plan required by the federal law overhauling health care, during a Thursday media briefing. Some of the key players behind the plan, including Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Surgeon General Regina Benjamin and Senator Tom Harkin, were on hand to outline a broad, and sometimes cryptic, blueprint for improving the nation's health. Sebelius said the plan "will help us transform our health care system away from a focus on sickness and disease to a focus on prevention and wellness." That shift, she said, would help "people live long and productive lives and can help combat rising health care costs." Some 17 federal agencies are expected to be involved in executing the plan, which was developed by the National Prevention Council. The plan would draw on a wide range of health workers, institutions, community-based organizations and government agencies for help.
The House today gave early approval to a bill that would require Texas prisoners to pay $100 a year for healthcare. Current law requires inmates to make a copayment of $3 per doctor visit. HB 26, by state Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano, seeks to offset some of the prison healthcare costs that taxpayers now absorb by requiring inmates in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to pay an annual fee of $100 if they use prison medical services. For inmates who are unable to pay the fee, 50% of money deposited into their trust fund would be removed until the fee is covered. For indigent inmates, those with $5 or less in their trust fund, no money would be taken out. Now, taxpayers pay for a large portion of inmate healthcare, Madden said. Lawmakers budgeted $900 million for prisoner health care during the current biennium, but actual costs were $50 million to $70 million higher, he said.
While many healthcare organizations have teams in place to modernize clinical practice across the enterprise, plenty still struggle to capture the right data and provide optimal staffing to produce ongoing quality improvement, a new survey suggests. In the first-ever survey on "clinical transformation" from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society , 86% of 175 respondents--mostly representing hospitals--said their organizations had established, or were in the process of establishing, a team for clinical transformation. Just 12% cited organizational commitment as a barrier to reporting on quality measures. HIMSS and survey sponsor McKesson defined clinical transformation as continuous assessment and improvement of care delivery at all levels of a healthcare system. "It occurs when an organization rejects existing practice patterns that deliver inefficient or less effective results and embraces a common goal of patient safety, clinical outcomes, and quality care through process redesign and IT implementation. By effectively blending people, processes, and technology, clinical transformation occurs across facilities, departments, and clinical fields of expertise," the survey report explained.