American Hospital Association (AHA)

See the following -

$18 For A Baby Aspirin? Hospitals Hike Costs For Everyday Drugs For Some Patients

Susan Jaffe | Kaiser Health News | April 30, 2012

Sudden chest pains landed Diane Zachor in a Duluth, Minn., hospital overnight, but weeks later she had another shock – a $442 bill for the same everyday drugs she also takes at home, including more than a half dozen common medicines to control diabetes, heart problems and high cholesterol. Read More »

21st Century Cures and the Road Ahead

I’ve been writing fewer posts recently because the trajectory forward for healthcare and healthcare IT seems to be evolving very rapidly.   In just the past week, we’ve had: the American Hospital Association letter suggesting that 21,000 pages of regulations be rolled back including Meaningful Use Stage Three concepts and quality measurement in many care settings, the passage of the 21st Century Cures bill and its many IT related mandates, and the nomination of Tom Price for HHS Secretary  and Seema Verma for CMS administrator...

4 interoperability challenges for healthcare providers

Susan D. Hall | Fierce Health IT | August 4, 2015

To achieve interoperability, much work remains for all healthcare organizations, with many challenges yet to be overcome, according to Lisa Khorey, executive director of EY Advisory Health Care.

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Adoption Of Electronic Health Records Grows Rapidly, But Fewer Than Half Of US Hospitals Had At Least A Basic System In 2012

Catherine M. DesRoches, Dustin Charles, Michael F. Furukawa, et.al. | Health Affairs | July 9, 2013

The US health care system is in the midst of an enormous change in the way health care providers and hospitals document, monitor, and share information about health and care delivery. Part of this transition involves a wholesale, but currently uneven, shift from paper-based records to electronic health record (EHR) systems. [...] Read More »

AMA Applauds Senators' Efforts To Fix EHR Meaningful Use

Press Release | American Medical Association (AMA) | September 24, 2013

Physicians are eager to implement EHRs, but overly aggressive timeline could have harmful, unintended consequences Read More »

CDC: Some Hospitals Need Assistance Using Antibiotics Properly (And The New Federal Budget May Help)

Maryn McKenna | Wired | March 4, 2014

[...] In an analysis of several sets of hospital data, gathered by the agency and also purchased from independent databases, the CDC said it found that more than 37 percent of prescriptions written in hospitals involved some sort of error or poor practice, increasing the risk of serious infections or antibiotic resistance. Read More »

CMS: Databases Can Be Used For Disaster Planning To Aid Vulnerable Populations

Susan D. Hall | FierceHealthIT | April 26, 2013

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will allow health information from eight databases to be used to identify vulnerable people who might need help during an emergency. Read More »

Deconstructing Veterans Health Care

Jon C. White | Pain Medicine News | October 25, 2014

...An estimated 80% of the 9 million veterans receiving health care at the VA are satisfied. To cull from this population a minority of dissatisfied people who report negative things about the VA is not responsible investigative reporting; it is just tabloid journalism...

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Do The CDC’s Ebola Precautions For U.S. Hospitals Go Far Enough?

Steven Ross Johnson | Modern Healthcare | August 21, 2014

U.S. hospitals have gone on alert since two American healthcare workers were brought to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta this month after being infected with the Ebola virus while treating Ebola patients in West Africa...

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Electronic Health Records: Saving Or Undermining Medicare?

Robert N. Charette | IEEE.org | September 26, 2012

Back in 2005, then Health & Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt was enthusiastically pushing hospitals and individual physicians to embrace electronic health records. Not only would healthcare providers and their patients benefit, but the cost saving EHRs would create (estimated to be $600 billion a year) would be “a key part to saving Medicare.” Read More »

Feds Postpone Bid To Govern Health IT Network

Ken Terry | InformationWeek | September 10, 2012

Bowing to widespread industry objections to its proposals for governing the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN), the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT (ONC) has tabled the project, at least for now. Read More »

Few U.S. Hospitals Can Fully Share Electronic Medical Records

Lisa Rapaport | Reuters | October 2, 2017

Less than one in three U.S. hospitals can find, send, and receive electronic medical records for patients who receive care somewhere else, a new study suggests. Just 30 percent of hospitals had achieved so-called interoperability as of 2015, the study found. While that’s slight improvement over the previous year, when 25 percent met this goal, it shows hospitals still have a long way to go, researchers report in Health Affairs...

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Fifth Time A Charm For Telehealth Bill?

Erin McCann | Government Health IT | March 21, 2013

A telemedicine bill aimed at expanding remote patient monitoring technology in rural and underserved communities was re-introduced in the Senate this week, making it the fifth time the bill has been proposed since 2005. Read More »

Forget Obamacare: Vermont Wants To Bring Single Payer To America

Sarah Kliff | Vox | April 9, 2014

"If Vermont gets single-payer health care right, which I believe we will, other states will follow," Vermont Gov. Shumlin predicted in a recent interview. "If we screw it up, it will set back this effort for a long time.

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Glasses Half Full and Empty: EHR Use Has Doubled, But...

Jane Sarasohn-Kahn | Health Populi | February 21, 2012

With $3.1 billion awarded to doctors who are buying and learning how to use electronic health records (EHRs), Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleeen Sebelius told a Kansas City community college that 41,000 doctors and 2,000 hospitals were on the road to meaningfully using the technology — double the number of EHR users in 2 years. Read More »