The breakdown in contract talks between Boston's Tufts Medical Center physicians and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts has patients fretting they may not be able to see their doctors, and scrambling to come up with alternate caregivers. Tufts Medical Center and its physicians group said they had been unable to reach an agreement with Blue Cross after 11 months of talks. Without a solution, Tufts doctors will no longer accept Blue Cross members as of Feb. 1.
Rep. Pete Stark, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee's health panel, has reintroduced his healthcare legislation without waiting for details from President-elect Barack Obama. Stark has introduced versions of the overhaul legislation for the last 15 years, and recently said he wanted to wait for Obama to spell out his priorities so lawmakers can work to "accomplish his goals." A spokesman for Stark said the bill is designed to provide healthcare coverage for all Americans, and fits within the framework Obama set during the presidential campaign.
The Internet has long drawn people seeking information about healthcare, and in 2007 health Web sites drew about 72 million unique visitors, up 14% from a year earlier. Such strong growth comes as sites increasingly focus on some of today's leading consumer health concerns. But while many health Web sites have enriched their offerings, privacy issues remain a concern.
America's most famous television surgeon, Sanjay Gupta, is President-elect Barack Obama's choice for U.S. surgeon general. A neurosurgeon who is also a correspondent for CNN and CBS, Gupta's selection suggests that the incoming administration values visible advisers who can drive a public message. He has also been offered a top post in the new White House Office of Health Reform.
The Health Information Systems and Management Systems Society has announced that HIMSS09 will kick off on April 4th with the preconference Symposia and Workshops. This year's event takes place in Chicago.
Axolotl, a provider of health information exchange solutions, and M*Modal, a provider of conversational documentation services, have announced a partnership that will capture dictated encounter information, present it, and interpret it in an effort to improve patient care. Axolotl has integrated M*Modal's "Speech Understanding" engine into its Elysium medical transcription workflow solution to populate its own EMR Lite, third party Health Information Systems and Electronic Medical Record systems.