California Rep. Pete Stark, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, has introduced the Health-e Information Technology Act of 2008 which would require the government to create clear standards for an interoperable Health IT system. The bill would also provide the creation of an open source HIT system that will be made available at little or no cost to all providers. There would be incentives to drive the adoption of standardized, interoperable Health IT systems, and the bill includes protections for the privacy of personal health information, according to a release.
The fear of losing competitive advantage among stakeholders is slowing the development of health information exchanges beyond simple recordkeeping systems, according to Joy Grossman, a senior health researcher at the Center for Studying Health System Change. Grossman said business concerns are slowing the evolution of HIEs into sophisticated platforms capable of managing data for quality management and performance incentive programs. She reached those conclusions after leading a 2007 AHRQ study in which a team of researchers evaluated community stakeholders of four HIEs: Cincinnati-based HealthBridge: Indiana HIE; CareSpark, which serves parts of Tennessee and Virginia; and the Tampa Bay Regional Health Information Organization.
Australian software developers clamouring to build personal e-health records risk creating new silos of unconnected patient information, warns Neil Jordan, Microsoft's managing director of worldwide health. In recent years, Microsoft has put a large effort into health IT, particularly consumer health IT, mainly through acquisition of successful companies and technology. Jordan said there is "huge" Australian interest in Microsoft's HealthVault, a consumer health web-based platform. Most of Microsoft's work in the United States with HealthVault has been "trying to corral" organizations that have patient record systems and get them to open up their applications so that information can be transferred in and out, Jordan added. HealthVault cannot be launched in Australia until it complies with the country's privacy laws.
Foreign patients are costing the U.K.'s National Health Service tens of millions of pounds by giving hospitals false identities and addresses, or even leaving the country in order to avoid paying for their treatment. Hospital officials said overseas visitors were leaving hospitals with hefty bills by evading the system that is meant to ensure that those ineligible for free NHS care pay for treatment.
Missouri hospitals and the nation's largest tobacco companies have sparred for almost 10 years over pretrial details in a billion-dollar case. The hospitals say cigarettes cause illness, and want cigarette makers to reimburse them for caring for smokers who were uninsured or did not pay their bills. The case could set a big precedent, and experts say it already has leaped some legal hurdles that killed more than 160 similar cases in courts across the country.
Staten Island University Hospital has agreed to return $88.9 million that prosecutors say it fraudulently obtained from government health insurance programs. The settlement represents the third time in a decade that the hospital has paid millions of dollars to resolve civil charges that it knowingly overbilled the government for treatment costs. Prosecutors had accused the hospital of conducting a collection of schemes from 1994 to 2005 that spanned many aspects of its operations, including substance abuse detoxification, inpatient psychiatric care, cancer treatment and the number of residents it had in training.
A coalition of healthcare groups has unveiled a code of ethics it hopes will protect nurses from other countries from abusive employment practices when they take jobs in the United States. Since the late 1990s, the United States has struggled to recruit enough nurses to serve its rapidly aging population, and a 2004 survey found that about 4% of all registered nurses in the United States had been educated abroad. But the coalition that prepared the ethics guidelines says that some are given jobs beneath their skill level, or are not placed in the hospitals or medical facilities they were promised. Others may not be paid fairly compared with their American counterparts.
Inova HealthPlex at Franconia-Springfield in Northern Virginia differs radically from the ordeal familiar to many Americans who seek treatment in the nation's hospital emergency rooms. HealthPlex's full-service emergency department sees close to 33,000 patients annually. Unlike traditional emergency rooms, it has no inpatient beds. Patients who need hospitalization or surgery are transferred by ambulance to surrounding hospitals. Experts say that HealthPlex, which opened in 2001 and is designed to divert patients from the ERs Inova operates at other Virginia hospitals, is an innovative, patient-friendly response to overcrowded ERs.
Healthcare economists recently critiqued the plans of the two presidential candidates, and found John McCain's health plan won't lower the ranks of the uninsured and Barack Obama's fails to curb the soaring cost of healthcare. The critiques reflect fundamental disagreements over how to improve access to health coverage, and provide warnings about what could go wrong with each candidate's plan.
Iowa officials say they are taking a rare action and asking federal officials to fine a Clinton hospital $10,000 for allegedly contributing to the death of a nursing home patient. The Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals says it has asked the CMS to fine Mercy Medical Center of Clinton $10,000 for alleged violations found during an April inspection of its hospital-based nursing home.
