Affordable Care Act (ACA)

See the following -

Systems Reengineering To Improve Care

Mike Millard | Healthcare IT News | May 30, 2014

PCAST report calls for fundamental rethinking of data practices

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Take Long View On Health Reform

Terry Schlemeier | Columbia Daily Tribune | December 15, 2013

Americans, especially the press, seem to be obsessive regarding the Affordable Care Act — or the sobriquet "Obamacare," as it has been dubbed. At first I was slightly disheartened by this, but, given further thought, it is only natural. For far too many years, we had no cohesive "system" for our health care, and now everyone, so it seems, is looking at a real system. Read More »

Tech Surge Aims To Fix What Ails HealthCare.gov Site

Nancy Owano | Top Tech News | November 1, 2013

After a month of haunting outages and outrage from disgruntled former supporters, the folks at HealthCare.gov -- the so-called Obamacare website -- are in need of a quick and serious fix. Oracle chief Larry Ellison said his company is pitching in to help fix what ails the government's health care Web site, shooting for improvement by November's end. Read More »

Tech Surge To Fix Healthcare Needed To Fix Our Broken Election Systems

Christine Pelosi | Huffington Post | October 21, 2013

As millions of Americans sign up for lifesaving healthcare, it is right that President Barack Obama ordered a "tech surge" to fix glitches in the healthcare.gov website. As the president said "we didn't fight this battle over as website" but as he knows, if the portal doesn't inspire confidence the policy can be attacked. [...] Read More »

Technology Is At The Heart Of Obama’s Second-Term Management Agenda

Charles S. Clark | Nextgov | July 8, 2013

President Obama on Monday highlighted the continuing role of technology in his second-term management reform agenda, using a televised speech to White House staff to also defend the federal workforce and nudge Congress to grant him long-sought authority to consolidate agencies to curb duplication. [...] Read More »

Telemedicine Clinics Make Inroads Into Primary Care

Don Fluckinger | SearchHealthIT | July 1, 2013

The health IT expansion of the last five years seemed to have left behind videoconferencing for remote patient visits. While it would seem a no-brainer that can potentially save time for both patient and provider, telemedicine seems to have been reserved for high-demand specialists, such as emergency stroke physicians and dermatologists who use telemedicine implementations to bring their skills to patients in rural areas. Read More »

The $2.7 Trillion Medical Bill: Colonoscopies Explain Why U.S. Leads The World In Health Expenditures

Elisabeth Rosenthal | New York Times | June 1, 2013

Deirdre Yapalater’s recent colonoscopy at a surgical center near her home here on Long Island went smoothly [...]. The test, which found nothing worrisome, racked up what is likely her most expensive medical bill of the year: $6,385. Read More »

The (So Far) Failed Promise Of Electronic Medical Records

Megan McArdle | The Daily Beast | January 21, 2013

Remember how Obamacare was going to "Bend the cost curve" for health care spending? That was OMB director Peter Orszag, back when Obamacare was being debated.  There were a number of theories about how it would accomplish this... Read More »

The ACO Failure Hypothesis: Likely But Not Inevitable

Les Funtleyder | The Health Care Blog | April 28, 2013

We recently participated in a program at Columbia Business School’s Healthcare Program on whether ACOs (Accountable Care Organizations) will fail. For those of you that don’t know, ACOs are one of the structures promulgated by PPACA (aka Obamacare) designed to encourage better cost control and quality improvement in the healthcare system. Read More »

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the HITECH Act continue to be rolled out

Like so many others, I wasn't about to read the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA) or the details of the HITECH Act. Nor was I going to pay much attention to the political blather about 'Obamacare' being pushed by biased commentators or politicians over the airwaves. I have simply been waiting to actually see how it would roll out and impact me and my family. Read More »

The Belarusian Connection

Bill Gertz | The Washington Free Beacon | February 3, 2014

U.S. intelligence agencies last week urged the Obama administration to check its new healthcare network for malicious software after learning that developers linked to the Belarus government helped produce the website, raising fresh concerns that private data posted by millions of Americans will be compromised. Read More »

The Case for Universal Care at the State Level

Amy Lange | Star Tribune | April 2, 2012

...I'm pleased to have collaborated recently with Growth & Justice, a Minnesota public-policy research organization, to produce a report that analyzes the economics of a redesigned health care system for Minnesota (www.growthandjustice.org/beyondaca). Read More »

The Door Revolves Again: The Former White House Health Reform Czar Goes To Private Equity Firm Looking For Investments Created By Health Reform

Roy M. Poses | Health Care Renewal | August 14, 2013

It appears that Ms Nancy DeParle, formerly a White House Deputy Chief of Staff, and before then, from 2009 - 2011, the Director of the White House Office of Health Care Reform, has gone through the revolving door again. Read More »

The Experience of Interoperability Thus Far

As I travel across the country and listen to CIOs struggling with mandates from Meaningful Use to ICD-10 to the HIPAA Omnibus rule to the Affordable Care Act, I'm always looking for ways to reduce the burden on IT leaders. All have expressed frustration with the health information exchange (HIE) policies and technologies for care coordination. quality measurement, and patient engagement. As a country, what can we do to reduce this anxiety? Read More »

The Future of AHRQ’s Health Services Research

Michael Berkwits | The Journal of the American Medical Association | August 19, 2015

Both houses of Congress will have to resolve their differences to pass a 2016 federal budget bill, which then goes to President Obama for his signature or veto. In the meantime, AHRQ Director Richard Kronick, PhD, sat down with JAMA to talk about the agency’s work and its relationship with other federal health research entities. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation...

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