Misleading Debt Limit Deal Math Counts Phantom Savings
Romina BocciaWithin mere days of the X ‑day deadline for when the federal government would run out of wiggle room to keep borrowing under the statutory debt limit, the President’s and House Speaker McCarthy’s negotiators released theFiscal Responsibility Act (H.R.3746). Here ’s what you need to know to judge its impact on addressing the U.S. debt problem:Waives the Debt LimitThe bill suspends the debt limit until January 1, 2025. A suspension acts like a waiver. The bill temporarily eliminates the debt limit, allowing for unlimited borrowing for about a year and a half.It ’s curious that Republicans agreed ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 1, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Romina Boccia Source Type: blogs
Fast Facts about Discretionary Spending
Romina Boccia and Dominik LettThe federal government will spend $6.3 trillion in 2023, 27 percent is discretionary and 73 percent is mandatory. Discretionary spending refers to federal programs that receive funding through annual appropriations. Less than half ofdiscretionary spending is for defense. More than half isfor nondefense activitiesincludingeducation, infrastructure, scientific research, and other programs.If Congress does not pass annual appropriations bills before October 1st (the beginning of the federal fiscal year), the government undergoes a partial “shutdown” where non‐essential functions are ha...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 30, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Romina Boccia, Dominik Lett Source Type: blogs
$9.3 Billion San Jose Subway Project Would Reduce Local Car Trips Less Than 0.4%
Marc JoffeA six ‐mile extension to the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system would have a minimal impact on personal vehicle emissions according to data in a federal travel forecast. Further, because the federal analysis is based on pre‐pandemic socioeconomic forecasts and travel patterns, it greatly ove restimates future ridership on the subway extension, which has a $9.3 billion estimated cost.A Federal Transit Administration (FTA)profile of the project shows that the BART extension would provide 32,900 passenger trips per weekday, or just over 9.5 million trips per year in 2040. The annual estimate is about 2...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 30, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Marc Joffe Source Type: blogs
Constitutional Contagion, The Courts, COVID, and Public Health
Wendy E. Parmet (Northeastern University), Constitutional Contagion, The Courts, COVID, and Public Health, Northeastern U. Sch. of L. Working Paper 435 (2023): More than three years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States is an unhealthy nation.... (Source: HealthLawProf Blog)
Source: HealthLawProf Blog - May 29, 2023 Category: Medical Law Authors: Katharine Van Tassel Source Type: blogs
The hidden factor in physician burnout: How the climate crisis is contributing to the erosion of well-being
Anyone who practiced medicine in the past decade will be well acquainted with the myriad discussions about epidemic of burnout and the eroding of well-being among health care providers that has accelerated with the pandemic. With 63 percent of physicians having at least one symptom of burnout and professional fulfillment dropping from 40 to 20
Read more…
The hidden factor in physician burnout: How the climate crisis is contributing to the erosion of well-being originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - May 28, 2023 Category: General Medicine Authors: Elizabeth Cerceo, MD Tags: Physician Public Health & Policy Source Type: blogs
Bonus Features – May 28, 2023 – 20+ health systems pledge to use Epic to share info under TEFCA, 84x increase in telehealth for mental health from 2019 to 2022, and more
This article will be a weekly roundup of interesting stories, product announcements, new hires, partnerships, research studies, awards, sales, and more. Because there’s so much happening out there in healthcare IT we aren’t able to cover in our full articles, we still want to make sure you’re informed of all the latest news, announcements, and stories happening to help you better do your job.
News and Studies
Nearly two dozen health systems have pledged to use Epic to share health information through the TEFCA framework, the EHR vendor announced, adding, “Our plan is to deliver software this year that will help...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - May 28, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Brian Eastwood Tags: Healthcare IT 4medica AliveCor Applied Robotics Association of Community Cancer Centers Avalon Healthcare Solutions AvaSure AVIAwards Clarify Health CliniComp CompuGroup Medical Conifer Consensus Consensus Cloud Solutions Conte Source Type: blogs
Weekly Roundup – May 27, 2023
Welcome to our Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundup. Each week, we’ll be providing a look back at the articles we posted and why they’re important to the healthcare IT community. We hope this gives you a chance to catch up on anything you may have missed during the week.
eClinicalWorks Goes from 0 to 60 with AI. At the recent eClinicalWorks Enterprise Summit, CEO Girish Kumar Navani spent an hour on demos of AI across the eCW EHR, from search to summaries to robotic process automation. Navani compared the surge in AI functionality to the impact of the smartphone in healthcare – only ChatGPT has done it in months, b...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - May 27, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Brian Eastwood Tags: Healthcare IT Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundup Source Type: blogs
Fax As An On-Ramp for Interoperability
The journey to achieve interoperability in healthcare has been too long and too expensive. To address this, companies have put effort into creating interoperability tools and platforms designed to make it easier to exchange data. To accelerate interoperability efforts, however, creating more technology may not the answer. Perhaps interoperability can gain more traction by putting a focus on getting more organizations on board the interoperability train.
Healthcare IT Today had the opportunity to discuss this topic with Scott Turicchi, CEO at Consensus Cloud Solutions, the world’s largest digital fax provider. Consensus h...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - May 25, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Colin Hung Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Interoperability IT Infrastructure and Dev Ops CHIR cloud fax solutions Consensus Cloud Solutions FHIR Healthcare Fax Healthcare Interoperability Healthcare Scene Featured HIMSS HIMSS 2023 HIMSS23 Source Type: blogs
The Goal of RPM is Management, Not Monitoring
The following is a guest article by Lucienne Ide, MD, PhD, Founder and CEO at Rimidi
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is a key capability in healthcare, particularly as we have seen multiple factors align in recent years: advances in medical device technology, decreased cost of cellular connectivity, new reimbursement models, and consumer demand that accelerated during the pandemic. RPM offers the ability to follow the patient from the clinic to the home and to provide a more complete picture of their health by collecting daily metrics such as blood pressure, blood glucose, weight, pulse oximetry, etc. But the healthcare in...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - May 25, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Author Tags: Analytics/Big Data C-Suite Leadership Clinical Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Telemedicine and Remote Monitoring Chronic Conditions CMS Data Connection Data Interoperability Digital Transformation EMR Fi Source Type: blogs
What Can We Learn from the Envision Bankruptcy?
This study ignited a firestorm of press criticism and was followed by an aggressive lobbying and PR campaign funded by United and other large commercial payers aimed at restricting balance billing by firms like Envision.
This campaign culminated in the Dec 2020 Congressional passage of the No Surprises Act, which effectively ended balance billing and subjected thousands of Envision’s out-of-network bills to an arbitration process. NSA went into effect in January 2022. Ironically, days prior to its Chapter 11 filing, Envision won a $91 million judgment from an arbitration panel against United fo...
Source: The Health Care Blog - May 24, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: The Business of Health Care Envision HCA Jeff Goldsmith Private equity Sound Physicians Tenet United HealthGroup Source Type: blogs
The Oft Forgotten Benefits of Multi-Cloud in Healthcare
I remember the days when cloud was almost a dirty word in healthcare. Most healthcare CIOs probably saw the writing on the wall that cloud was the future, but there was a lot of fear going to the cloud. Now every healthcare organization is not just in the cloud but is multi-cloud. What’s interesting about healthcare’s move to the cloud is that we often forget the benefits of multi-cloud when it comes to things like patient outcomes and clinician experience.
This was the topic of discussion at the HIMSS 2023 annual conference in the session titled “CXO Spotlight: Improve Patient Outcomes and Clinicia...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - May 23, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: John Lynn Tags: C-Suite Leadership Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System IT Infrastructure and Dev Ops Bill Wilson Clinician Experiences COVID-19 Geoffrey Brown Healthcare Cloud Healthcare Multi-Cloud Healthcare Scene Featured H Source Type: blogs
Just Get Connected Already
When my optometrist notices an odd lesion on one of my eyes, we agreed we should let my PCP know. The optometrist printed his report that I would bring to my next PCP exam, because otherwise my optometrist had no reliable way to transfer the data.
This is the burden still faced by three quarters of U.S. clinicians, as estimated by Paul L Wilder, Executive Director of the CommonWell Health Alliance. The alliance was a bold gesture made ten years ago by leading EHR vendors to demonstrate their commitment to data sharing. Many other health IT firms have joined CommonWell since then.
In the video interview below, Wilder and Li...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - May 23, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: John Lynn Tags: C-Suite Leadership EMR-EHR Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Interoperability Regulations CommonWell CommonWell Health Alliance FHIR FHIR Connectathon Health Data Interoperability Health Data Sharing Health Source Type: blogs
Laser-Based Breath Analysis Detects COVID-19 Infection
Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a laser-based breathalyzer technology that can detect molecules in breath samples that indicate the presence of specific diseases, such as COVID-19. The device is called a frequency comb breathalyzer, and using it involves pumping a breath sample into the device where lasers irradiate it at many different frequencies, and mirrors bounce the light around to ensure that the sample is thoroughly investigated. Based on how the molecules in the sample absorb the light, a machine learning algorithm an...
Source: Medgadget - May 22, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Diagnostics Medicine Public Health CUBoulder NIST Source Type: blogs
The Empathy-First Approach: Choosing Technology that Benefits All Healthcare Stakeholders
The following is a guest article by Jon Zimmerman, CEO at Holon Solutions
In today’s healthcare landscape, clinical information systems are valuable tools for coordinating care and improving outcomes. However, as healthcare workers have discovered time and time again, these technologies are not always optimally user-friendly, nor are they built for today’s complex world. Fundamentally, most of these different systems just don’t work well together.
When providers struggle to use their existing technologies while having to incorporate information from disconnected systems, it stands to reason that patients and payers...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - May 22, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Author Tags: Clinical Communication and Patient Experience Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Clinician Burnout EHR Empathetic Technology Healthcare Staff Burnout Holon Solutions Improving Patient Experience Jon Zimmerman Source Type: blogs
Friday Feature: Compass Educators and Ellemercito Academy
Colleen Hroncich“Prior to the pandemic, I had never considered microschooling or delved into out‐of‐system learning environments,” says Lizette Valles, founder ofCompass Educators andEllemercito Academy in California.Lizette and her husband Oscar were long ‐time private school teachers. After COVID-19 regulations closed schools, they founded Compass Educators: A Holistic Tutoring Company to help parents and students deal with distance learning challenges. Their goal was to meet students where they were and equip them to thrive in the new environ ment. It succeeded so well that some parents asked Lizett...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 19, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Colleen Hroncich Source Type: blogs
