Posts Tagged ‘healthcare’

“The greater the loyalty of a group toward the group, the greater is the motivation among the members to achieve the goals of the group, and the greater the probability that the group will achieve its goals.” – Rensis Likert Loyalty. People generally tend to have loyalty to each other, their country, perhaps their favorite […]

Mobile Health, or “mHealth”, offers benefits throughout the healthcare industry. For clinicians, mHealth is a method to remotely monitor a patient’s health and improve the quality care rendered. For patients, mHealth provides a way to monitor their own health more easily and reduces the cost of care by decreasing the amount of time spend at […]

Intimate medical details about your health is no longer stored safely in a dusty locked file cabinet. Thanks to the HITECH Act of 2009, your private health information will end up in data files that hundreds of healthcare workers may have the ability to access. However, in early 2003 the Department of Health and Human […]

Let’s face it tablets and smart phones have increased productivity levels of employed professionals. However, many physicians have not experienced these benefits, because their systems limit access to pertinent medical information to solely work computers. For the most part, healthcare providers have been unable to review lab or medical image results from anywhere but their […]

A recent post by ICD-10 Watch sums up the ICD-10 struggle well: “ICD-10 coding is a tough sell” and “great healthcare is in the data”. Weinberger points out that providers are stretched to their limits with the many other healthcare reforms and feel like the benefits of adopting ICD-10 simply aren’t there. However, the ICD-10 […]

Compared to other nations, the United States has difficulty measuring up to some key areas related to health care quality. In terms of life expectancy, Docteur and Berenson (2009) contend that the United States has one of the lowest life expectancy rates and the highest mortality rate from conditions that could have been prevented. These […]

The healthcare industry is ecstatic about the opportunity to apply business intelligence (BI) to improve healthcare quality, cost and outcomes. Providers are using BI to address process issues that limit operational efficiencies. BI is “the solution” to successfully overcoming short-comings and creating provider bottom-line benefits, patient time and efficiency benefits and overall social equity. IBM […]

According to the AHRQ, there are an approximate 4.4 million preventable discharges which contribute to $30 billion in healthcare costs annually. Beginning in October 2012, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid will begin punishing hospitals by withholding reimbursements to hospitals with higher-than-average readmission rates for patients with three types of diagnoses or health issues: 1. […]

The push for electronic health records (EHRs) kicked into high gear in 2010 when providers spent a record breaking $88.6 billion on health IT initiatives based in adopting EHRs. While many are cheering on the movement, others are more hesitant as security concerns emerge. Price Water Cooper claims that the use of EHRs drastically increases […]

Requirements regarding the electronic transfer of personal health information differs from state to state. Some have suggested that the Federal government needs to establish guidelines for health information exchanges. Health information exchanges (HIEs) are technology solutions that address healthcare issues by aggregating massive amounts of data and allowing multiple entities have access to the data […]

Taking a top-down approach to government initiatives has been scorned by New Public Management advocates, who claim that a top-down hierarchical structure hampers efficiency, fails to meet the needs of society and lends itself to poor outcomes. Yet, today’s Meaningful Use initiative is noted for taking a top-down approach. If scholars are right, then Meaningful […]

Telehealth, not to be confused with telemedicine, is the delivery of health-related services and information via telecommunications technologies. It is yet another way to address healthcare quality issues and offer consumer-centric healthcare. InMedica’s most recent report, “The World Market for Telehealth – A Quantitative Market Assessment – 2011 Edition,” projects the telehealth market will “exceed […]