September 13th, 2010 by DavidHarlow in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion
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The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released an advisory opinion at the end of last month okaying a hospital’s proposal to provide insurance pre-authorization services free of charge to patients and physicians. This is an issue that has long vexed folks in the imaging world.
Clearly, this is a free service provided to referral sources (to the extent they are obligated by contract with third-party payors to obtain the pre-authorization before referring a patient for an MRI, for example), so why is the OIG okay with it? In their opinion, the OIG blesses the arrangement for four reasons. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at HealthBlawg :: David Harlow's Health Care Law Blog*
August 16th, 2010 by DavidHarlow in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion
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The Queen of Soul famously wailed about being a link in a “chain of fools.” The lead story in the August 13th Boston Globe tells us about another sort of link in the chain — the weakest link in the chain of custody of patient records.
In brief, a pathology billing service bought out by another service apparently dumped all records more than a year old in a town dump. A Globe photographer taking out his own trash noticed that the paper records (which he was looking at because he thought they ought to be recycled rather than dumped) had identifiable patient data and represented at least four hospitals from across Eastern Massachusetts. Clearly, these records ought to have been shredded or otherwise destroyed before disposal. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at HealthBlawg :: David Harlow's Health Care Law Blog*
May 3rd, 2010 by DavidHarlow in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Interviews, Opinion
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Healthcare costs are a perennial issue for employers and employees. There are a variety of approaches out there designed to improve health status and health outcomes and reduce costs at the same time. Proponents of a variety of approaches have been featured here on HealthBlawg in the past.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with George Pantos, of the Healthcare Performance Management Institute, a brand-new organization on the scene, founded by a group of folks who have developed tools for managing these costs. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at HealthBlawg :: David Harlow's Health Care Law Blog*
April 8th, 2010 by DavidHarlow in Better Health Network, Interviews, Opinion, Research
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GE Healthcare IT has been working in the years leading up to the HITECH Act on a number of initiatives to enable meaningful use of healthcare IT — or as Senior VP and General Manager of eHealth Earl Jones puts it, building the “connected healthcare ecosystem.”
In what may be seen as either a pragmatic move or a revolutionary one, GE is developing tools that allow for communication across healthcare IT systems — not just connecting one GE Centricity installation with another — but acting as a technology-agnostic bridge for information across healthcare IT systems and across health systems.
While Jones notes that we’re in the early stages of linking isolated lilypads across the surface of a pond, GE is developing tools that not only facilitate interoperability, but also facilitate the dissemination of medical knowledge and the use of clinical decision rules developed locally or by pacesetting health systems (e.g. Mayo, Intermountain). Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at HealthBlawg*
April 2nd, 2010 by DavidHarlow in Announcements, Better Health Network, Health Policy, Humor, Medblogger Shout Outs
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This week, healthcare reform looms large in the minds of medical blog carnival hosts. Evan Falchuk’s healthcare reform edition of Grand Rounds is up at his See First blog. Rch Elmore hosts the current Health Wonk Review at his Healthcare Technology News (check out the flying pigs photos and more; cf. the HealthBlawger’s “First Hundred Days” edition of Blawg Review for another reference to flying pigs).
The next edition of Health Wonk Review will be hosted right here on April 15th. The themes we will be exploring in that bi-weekly exegesis of health wonkery include the following:
- Metaphors
- Lying
- Song (esp. the blues)
- Art (esp. painting, drawing)
- Inventors and their contraptions
- Fast food
- Liberation
- Cosmetic surgery/medical spas
- Impressionist 19th century novels
- Immenseness
- Mortality
- Racial integration
And, of course…
Please submit your best examples of health wonkishness in these categories no later than 9 a.m. EDT Wednesday April 14th, thank you (extra points for early submissions), and come back on the 15th to learn more than you ever wanted to know about healthcare policy and to see the meaning of these categories revealed. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at HealthBlawg :: David Harlow's Health Care Law Blog*
