Palm-scanning devices and identification cards could become part of a doctor's appointment under proposed legislation that aims to crack down on Medicaid fraud in New York. The bill, introduced Wednesday by Assemblywoman Naomi Rivera, D-Bronx, and Sen. Michael Ranzenhofer, R-Amherst, would dish out Medicard cards equipped with biometric technology. The bill's sponsors say the initial $20 million investment is a fraction of the estimated $5 billion in Medicaid fraud that occurs annually in the state. Medicaid is a medical care program for low-income residents. After receiving the card in the mail, an individual would scan his or her palm and activate the card in person at a county social services office. Checkups would begin and end with scanning and swiping. Staffers at pharmacies, clinics and hospitals also would have to scan patients' palms and swipe ID cards to validate services provided, and allow billing and payment.
About 56% of surveyed physician practices have not scheduled internal testing of new HIPAA 5010 transaction sets, while 8.3% of respondents reported that internal 5010 testing is under way at their organizations, according to a Medical Group Management Association survey. HHS has set a deadline of Jan. 1, 2012, for using HIPAA 5010 transaction sets, which regulate the transmission of certain health care transactions. Industry guidelines state that hospitals and medical practices should have installed and tested upgrades with external business partners by Jan. 1, 2011. According to the survey, nearly 13% of respondents said such testing is slated to start between July and September. The survey also found that about 61% of respondents said their organizations had not scheduled external HIPAA 5010 testing with major health plans.
The Henry Ford Health System—the largest provider of hospital care in the region —made $60 million last year in spite of a stubborn economy and growing costs to care for the poor and uninsured, it announced today. Ford's success—its eighth consecutive year of financial growth—makes it the largest system in southeast Michigan in revenue and in-patient volume, said Robert Riney, president/COO for the system. Almost 18% of the patients needing hospitalization last year in southeast Michigan were admitted at one of the Ford system's six hospitals in metro Detroit, a 31% increase in four years, Riney said in a media briefing today to release its fiscal 2010 financial statements.
The HIT Policy Committee's Meaningful Use Workgroup struggled to reach consensus on key Stage 2 requirements, with some accusing the group of being timid in certain areas, and others characterizing the proposed requirements as unrealistic in the given timeframe. Specifically in the area of providing patients with electronic access to their hospital visit summaries through a Web-based portal, tempers flared at the April 5 meeting of the HIT Policy Committee, convened by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Arguing that the workgroup seemed willing to add requirements around provider-to-provider electronic transmission, yet balked at those dealing with provider-to-patient transmission, Christine Bechtel, vice president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, said, "We have to be careful about our tendency to raise the bar [to receive our endorsement] with anything around patients and families, and to question them in a way we don't question things for providers. We have to find a way to do this in Stage 2, in 2013, when everyone else and their mother can communicate over the Internet."
Stroke-preventing devices are not being tested in people who resemble the patients most likely to receive them, a new study shows. The researchers looked at tests being done as part of "post-market surveillance studies," which test products that are already approved and in general use by the public. They found that patients who had stents placed into their neck in these studies were healthier than other patients in a broader nationwide registry of people who received stents. Yet the patients in the larger registry database who weren't in the post-marketing studies were 50% more likely to have had a stroke in the past, and were four times as likely to die in the hospital.
Wyoming Medical Center officials have been meeting with their counterparts at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center to create a statewide "accountable care organization," the WMC's CEO said. That will require a cultural shift, in addition to changes in the ways the federal government reimburses hospitals for Medicare and Medicaid patients, Vickie Diamond said. "We're trying to create models that work for Wyoming," Diamond said. "We pride our independence, but this is a time for providers to come together," she said at the monthly meeting of the board of trustees of the Memorial Hospital of Natrona County. The board, appointed by the Natrona County Commission, oversees the lease of the county's hospital assets by the nonprofit Wyoming Medical Center Inc. The WMC's rent, in effect, is to provide care for the indigent and inmates in the Natrona County Detention Center. The discussions with the Cheyenne hospital began in 2010 after Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and have intensified as the paperwork piles up, Diamond said. "This is the year of regulation."