Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Health Informatics News

Health Informatics News


CHIME Names Two New Fellows

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 05:43 AM PST

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives ( CHIME ) of Ann Arbor, Mich., announced two new fellows: Pamela McNutt and Rick Schooler.   McNutt is senior vice president and CIO for Methodist Health System in Dallas . McNutt's experience in the field of healthcare information technology spans nearly 30 years, the last 18 of which have been in the role of CIO at Methodist. Prior to joining Methodist in 1993, she worked for Medicus/HBOC and Hermann Memorial Hospital in Houston . McNutt recently completed her term on the CHIME Board of Trustees. She is a member of the CHIME Advocacy Leadership Team and Policy Steering Committee. She also participated as a faculty member for the CHIME Healthcare CIO Boot Camp 2003-2006.   Schooler is senior vice president and CIO for Orlando Health in Florida , where he is responsible for information technology, telecommunications, clinical informatics, medical records, biomedical engineering, and purchasing and materials management. Prior to joining Orlando Health in 2001, he served as vice president & CIO at Central Georgia Health System and Director of Systems Integration at Methodist Hospital of Indiana. He was a member of the CHIME Board of Trustees from 2006-2008, where he also served as Chair. In 2008, Schooler earned CHIME’s Innovator of the Year Award, for his leadership in employing IT to shorten the patient discharge process. Using computer-integrated telephony and interactive voice response technology, the newly automated process frees up nurses and saves money by creating bed space earlier in the day.   According to CHIME, it established the fellow program to honor and recognize members who have actively participated in the organization and who have made significant contributions to the healthcare IT field as a CIO.  

Microsoft HUG Winners Announced

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 05:36 AM PST

The Microsoft Health Users Group (Microsoft HUG) and Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., released the winners of the 13th annual Microsoft HUG Innovation Awards. For more than a decade, the honors have been awarded to organizations that demonstrate success using the company’s technology to enhance and transform the quality of patient care, reduce costs, drive interoperability, improve productivity, streamline clinical and business processes, and enable informed decisions, it says. Microsoft HUG is made up of more than 5,000 members and 23 corporate supporters. A panel of industry experts — including Healthcare Informatics’ own, Charlene Marietti —evaluated contestants. Winners and finalists were recognized at the 2010 Annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Conference & Exhibition in Atlanta. The following are the 2010 winners for the Microsoft HUG 2010 Innovation Awards: Winner for Best Use of Clinical Records — Inpatient ·         Singapore General Hospital/Integrated Health Information Systems selected Eclipsys Sunrise Patient Flow and CADI Scientific to couple its workflow-based patient flow platform with radio frequency identification and real-time location system. Winner for Best Use of Clinical Records — Ambulatory ·         Partners HealthCare , Brigham and Women’s Hospital , and it’s technology solution partner Claricode leveraged Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server and the Microsoft .NET Framework to develop ASTER, the adverse drug event (ADE) Spontaneous Triggered Reporting System that submits ADE reports directly from electronic health records to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Winner for Best Use of Health Information Exchange (HIE) and Interoperability ·         In its quest toward genuine interoperability, Doylestown Hospital used the NextGen Health Information Exchange, formerly NextGen Community Health Solution platform from NextGen Healthcare to launch the Doylestown Clinical Network. NextGen Health Information Exchange uses Microsoft’s Web Services, ASP.NET and other Microsoft technologies to enable the free flow of information among completely independent practices with disparate IT configurations. Winner for Best Use of Microsoft HealthVault Applications ·         Premera Blue Cross partnered with Get Real Consulting to develop and implement a solution that enables Premera members to store their claims histories in their personal HealthVault accounts.

Intel and Pitney Bowes Join Consortium

Posted: 02 Mar 2010 08:38 AM PST

Santa Clara, Calif.-headquartered Intel Corp., and Stamford, Conn.-based Pitney Bowes have joined the Dossia Consortium. According to Cambridge, Mass.-based Dossia , the companies will now provide the Dossia Personal Health Record Platform to employees.   Dossia founders are cooperating to provide their employees with access to and control over their personal health information, with the goal of improving the health of their employees while controlling their healthcare spending, it touts. The founders group includes AT&T, Applied Materials, BP America, Cardinal Health, Intel, Pitney Bowes, Abraxis BioScience, Vanguard Health Systems, sanofi-aventis, and Walmart.   Dossia is a non-profit organization consisting of several large U.S. employers who have united under a common vision: to empower their employees to make smarter more informed decisions about their healthcare, it says. Dossia says, through the group companies will leverage their combined influence to break down barriers to health information, which will help drive consumer-initiated change.  

Obama: No extras for FL

Posted:

 3/3/2010 © Kaiser Health News
Remember Florida's cushion from Medicare Advantage cuts included in the Senate bill? It's gone, says President Obama. In other concessions to Republicans, he may add high-deductible plans with health savings accounts, money for tort-reform experiments and higher Medicaid pay for doctors in his proposal today.

3-day pill limit sparks fight

Posted:

By Jim Saunders
 3/2/2010 © Health News Florida
Limiting clinics that dispense their own drugs to 3 days' worth would strike a blow at pill mills, but the proposal has alarmed some doctors who use dispensing as a lucrative sideline. See a related Sun-Sentinel story on middle-school lobbyists.

Senate stall cuts docs' pay 21%

Posted:

3/2/2010 © Palm Beach Post
Doctors who treat Medicare patients took a 21-percent pay cut on Monday, when a senator stalled action on a bill that would restore their pay, extend jobless benefits to 500,000 uninsured and extend COBRA subsidies. Watch Sen. Jim Bunnings, R-Ky. explain. Doctors plan a protest for Wednesday.

FL heart troubles show up in report

Posted:

3/2/2010 © South Florida Sun Sentinel
It's not surprising that Florida has more heart-disease patients than average, given the demographics. But the rate of heart disease is higher than average, too. So is the rate of hospitalization for heart problems.

Stolen laptop could put 12,500 at risk

Posted:

3/2/2010 © Gainesville Sun
Shands HealthCare has notified about 12,500 patients that a laptop containing their medical information was stolen in January. The information includes names, addresses, medical record numbers and some Social Security numbers.

'Country Doctor of the Year' in Keys

Posted:

2/9/2010 © Miami Herald
Steven J. Smith of the Keys may be a general surgeon, but he treats patients at his family practice for everything from the common cold to cancer. He was named the 2009 Country Doctor of the Year.

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