Obamacare
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The Staggering Cost Of An Epic Electronic Health Record Might Not Be Worth It
...[B]ecause it is no small task to deploy [Epic, Judith Faulkner] is there all the way to hand-hold jittery CIOs, and help them get millions of dollars in government subsidies by showing meaningful use of her EHR. Her not-for-profit clientèle will need every penny of those taxpayers’ dollars, but they won’t cover anywhere near the staggering cost of an Epic EHR. Read More »
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Two States Want To Extend Obamacare Deadline Because Of Glitchy Websites
At least two states are requesting a longer Obamacare enrollment period--and they might get it.
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U.S. Prosecutors Investigate Oregon's Failed Health Insurance Exchange
The U.S. attorney's office in Portland has issued subpoenas to Oregon's health insurance exchange as part of a grand jury investigation into the spectacular failure of the state's system, which was never able to enroll consumers online even though it spent more than $248 million in taxpayer money on the operation...
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US Hospitals Facing Financial Squeeze-Mass Closures
In the last year, the profitability of U.S. hospitals eroded for the first time since the Great Recession, pushing some closer to and others over the solvency precipice. Revenues are down and costs are up. And these issues appear systemic and entrenched, giving rise to a series of important and relevant questions: How can hospitals adapt? If they do, will they still survive? And, do we as a nation think it’s important to make hospitals accessible, even if they lose money? Read More »
VA changes show the way to affordable care
Here’s an idea. We can reform Obamacare the same way the Veterans Health Administration reformed itself in the 1990s....Faced with censure and threat of dissolution, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs responded with striking changes that earned widespread praise. By 2004, a RAND corporation study implied that VA care had become America’s best.
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Wall Street Journal: "ObamaCare’s Electronic-Records Debacle"
This Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Op-Ed could have been entitled "President Sucker: Led Down the Garden Path by The Healthcare IT Industry." It is entitled "ObamaCare’s Electronic-Records Debacle", as below. First, though: On Feb. 18, 2009 the WSJ published the following Letter to the Editor authored by me...I have a different view on who is deceiving whom. In fact, it is the government that has been deceived by the HIT industry and its pundits. Stated directly, the administration is deluded about the true difficulty of making large-scale health IT work. The beneficiaries will largely be the IT industry and IT management consultants.
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What Are the Real Consequences of ObamaCare?
If America has anything, it’s a disease care system that focuses on episodic interventions by health care professionals trying to salvage a patient from the ravages of chronic diseases, many of which are self-induced. It’s a system that does not focus on health maintenance, something that really would alter the nature of the country’s well-being. I would argue that using the same money we are spending on this ObamaCare nonsense to teach kids in elementary school how to eat, shop, cook, exercise, not use drugs or tobacco and to have safe sex would probably improve health in the country far more than this bill ever did or will.
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What Oracle’s Botched Obamacare Site Says About the Future of the Web
It’s bad enough that the state of Oregon has paid software giant Oracle over $100 million to build a healthcare exchange site that doesn’t work. But it now appears that Oregon is stuck with Oracle, unable to simply hire another firm to finish the job. It’s the latest setback for the troubled Obamacare rollout, and it provides a classic example of an old-school IT provider lagging behind the new and more effective way of building massive web operations — the open source approach behind mega-scale websites like Google and Facebook. Read More »
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What The U.S. Can Learn From Brazil's Healthcare Mess
Here’s what it looks like when a sprawling, diverse nation tries to cover everybody....By a lot of measures, Brazil’s Sistema Único de Saúde—or SUS—has led to huge health gains.
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What’s Next for Health Care? Confused Congress Should Look to Indian Country
Senate Republicans campaigned against Obamacare for seven years. Yet there was never an alternative that had support from a majority of their own party. The problem is simple: Many (not all) Republicans see health care programs that help people—the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, etc.—as welfare. Others look at the evidence and see these programs that are effective: insuring people, creating jobs, supporting a rural economy, and actually resulting in better health outcomes. Evidence-based success stories...
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Why Data Connectivity To Traditional IT Systems And EHRs Should Be A Priority In Your Next-Generation Medical Device Designs
...Another major area that’s lacking in medical devices, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) Top Health Industry Issues of 2014 report, is that of electronic health records (EHRs), health IT, and patient data connectivity. According to PwC, only about 18% of device companies integrate data into clinical workflows and EHRs — this means there’s a very nice opportunity for upstarts and savvy incumbents...
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Why Doctors Still Use Pen And Paper
The health-care system is one of the most technology-dependent parts of the American economy, and one of the most primitive. Every patient knows, and dreads, the first stage of any doctor visit: sitting down with a clipboard and filling out forms by hand.
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Why I Hope to Help End EHR’s Lack of Interoperability
I am tired of waiting. Millions of medical professionals and patients are tired of waiting. We have been waiting for EHR interoperability since the dawn of EHRs in the 1960s. Enough is enough! Our goal is to achieve EHR interoperability through a grass roots coalition of medical professionals and patients who are tired of waiting. The simple life-saving ability of hospital EHRs to connect to one another so healthcare providers can easily and readily access patient data is not being addressed. This type of issue is traditionally solved by industry or government initiatives. But so far they have not, and apparently will not solve it so I have decided to raise this issue through an outpouring of angry citizens, hospital patients, physicians and others being impacted. Read More »
Why The Government Never Gets Tech Right
For the first time in history, a president has had to stand in the Rose Garden to apologize for a broken Web site. But HealthCare.gov is only the latest episode in a string of information technology debacles by the federal government. Indeed, according to the research firm the Standish Group, 94 percent of large federal information technology projects over the past 10 years were unsuccessful...
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Winners And Losers With The 21st Century Cures Bill
A sprawling health bill that passed the Senate Thursday by a 94 to 5 vote and is expected to gain President Obama's signature is a grab bag for industries, academic institutions and patient groups that spent oodles of time and money lobbying to advance their interests. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell calls it "the most important legislation that Congress will pass this year." Who wins and who loses? Here's the rundown of what's at stake in the 21st Century Cures Act...
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