Despite renewed discussion around healthcare IT investments because of the federal stimulus package, most HIT budgets are still tight and providers are looking to IT vendors for creative solutions to keep projects moving. But a new report from KLAS says those creative solutions are virtually non-existent. The report, Executive Reaction to the Stimulus Package, explores the gap between what providers need and what vendors are offering to deal with a troubled economy.
The World Health Organization kept its pandemic flu alert at the second highest level during a meeting last week, but said that future changes would reflect how severe an outbreak was as well as how widespread. The agency has been weighing how to revamp its pandemic alert scale to reflect both the severity of the flu as well as its geographic spread around the world following criticism that it may have caused undue panic about the new strain whose effects have been mainly mild apart from in Mexico.
Various inappropriate photographs of on-duty nurses at a National Health Service trust have sullied the reputation of the facility. In addition, all the disturbing images were taken as the three hospitals of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust were at the center of the worst superbug outbreak in NHS history: More than 1,200 patients were infected in two C. diff outbreaks between 2004 and 2006.
The Australian Medical Association has called on the federal government to develop a contingency plan for public hospitals in case a large number of people drop their private health coverage. The Australian government recently announced changes to private health insurance rebates, and estimated around 25,000 people will drop their coverage as a result. The AMA is encouraging the government to put in place a plan to increase funding to public hospitals so they could cope with the potential extra demand.
Sioux Falls, SD-based Sanford Health has announced that it will construct its first international children's clinic in the Central American nation of Belize. The clinic, expected to open in 2011, will be built on land donated by a hospital in Belize City. Sanford Health will collaborate with the Belize Healthcare Charitable Trust and Belize Natural Energy Trust on the facility.
For more than a decade, researchers have documented the inequities, shortcomings, waste, and dangers in uncoordinated medical services that consume nearly one-fifth of the U.S. economy. Exorbitant medical bills thrust too many families into bankruptcy, hinder the global competitiveness of U.S. companies, and threaten the government's long-term solvency. But the consensus on the issue breaks down on the question of how best to create a coordinated, high-performing, evidence-based system that provides the right care at the right time to the right people, according to this article from the Washington Post.