Using a Beacon grant provided by the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT, the Mayo Clinic is building what may be the next generation of health information exchanges with a group of healthcare providers in southeast Minnesota. In this real-world demonstration, Mayo will apply the computer tools it is developing through a federal SHARP grant to create new methods of mining electronic health record data. "We're building a patient data repository for southeast Minnesota that will execute on a lot of the promise and principles we're articulating in our SHARP grant," said Christopher Chute, MD, a Mayo Clinic epidemiologist and the principal investigator on Mayo's SHARP grant. Mayo is using the government's CONNECT software to establish the HIE. The world-famous group practice also is working with the pioneering Indiana Health Information Exchange to build a data repository like the one in Indianapolis.
When Congress passed legislation in 2009 creating new Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments to encourage health care providers to use electronic health records, much of the health care community applauded. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, passed as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, was long overdue recognition of the importance of health IT in improving care for patients, while also reducing healthcare spending. But amid much fanfare for the HITECH Act, a notable group of providers was left with little to cheer about. The nation's mental health and addiction treatment providers were excluded from the incentive payments. So while some providers continue to be offered financial incentives to use health IT to increase health care quality, reduce medical errors and better coordinate care, providers at psychiatric hospitals, mental health and addiction treatment facilities, and community mental health centers are being told to fend for themselves.
Showing the power of the healthcare industry on Capitol Hill, a new bill that would require the government to treat multi-hospital systems the same for purposes of Meaningful Use, whether or not they had a single Medicare number, has gained 50 cosponsors in the House. But it's unclear that the proposed legislation, which is similar to House and Senate bills that failed to pass last year, will be adopted this time around. Rep. Michael C. Burgess, MD, (R-TX), Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) and Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) introduced the Equal Access and Parity for Multi-Campus Hospitals Act, HR 2500, on July 12. The measure aims to change how the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services defines multi-facility healthcare organizations for purposes of determining the incentives paid to those that show Meaningful Use of electronic health records.
Thousands of assaults occur each year at California's state psychiatric hospitals. Last October, a patient allegedly murdered a staffer at Napa State Hospital. Employees there demonstrated, demanding greater safety. Now, the protests have spread to Metropolitan State Hospital near Los Angeles, where about 100 workers recently spent a broiling hot lunch hour marching in front of the place where they work. Psychiatrist Laura Dardashti, who has worked at Metropolitan since 2006, says that when she started, co-workers told her, "It's not if you get assaulted -- it's when." Her turn came about a year and a half ago. Here's what state statistics say about "the norm" at Metropolitan: Last year, staff members were attacked by patients more than 1,300 times -- nearly double the number of assaults from the year before. Meanwhile, patients assaulted other patients at a rate of almost seven times a day.
Northeast Health System, which operates hospitals in Beverly, Gloucester, and Lynn, has agreed to affiliate with Lahey Clinic of Burlington, a teaching hospital affiliated with Tufts Medical School, in the latest hospital merger in Massachusetts. The deal, which will create a new umbrella company called Lahey Health System, could affect other potential consolidation moves. Lahey had begun preliminary merger talks with Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard-affiliated teaching hospital that had also submitted a bid for Northeast. Lahey and Northeast are both nonprofit organizations. Two for-profit hospital chains, Steward Health Care System and Vanguard Health Systems, had also initially submitted bids for Northeast, though Boston-based Steward ultimately dropped out of the competition.
All U.S. women should have access to free birth control as part of the 2010 healthcare reform law, the Institute of Medicine recommended Tuesday, along with eight other suggestions for preventive health services. Commissioned by the Department of Health and Human Services to identify "critical gaps" in the agency's list of preventive services, the highly influential IOM report recommends that all U.S.-approved birth control methods be covered by insurers. That includes the highly controversial "morning-after" or "Plan B" pill that is considered by some to be a form of abortion because the woman takes it in the hours after sexual intercourse. The reform law requires insurance plans to cover services on the HHS list, meaning the adoption of the recommendation would make the pill co-pay free for "all women of reproductive capacity."