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Archive for the "Guest Posts" category

Engage With Grace II

Happy Thanksgiving All!
by Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team
Last Thanksgiving weekend, many of us bloggers participated in the first documented blog rally to promote Engage With Grace — a movement aimed at having all of us understand and communicate our end-of-life wishes. It was a great success, with over 100 bloggers in the healthcare [...]

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Three Years Of Medical Home Demonstration Preparation Down the Drain?

Do you remember the scene in the movie Animal House where Bluto Blutarski laments “…seven years of college education down the drain?”
Why aren’t primary care physicians expressing similar laments about  the shelving of the MMHD (Medicare Medical Home Demonstration) in favor of the MAPCI (Multi-Payer Advanced Primary Care Initiative).
My colleague Jaan Sidorov, MD and I pick [...]

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Meeting Announcement: “Introduction to the Clinical Groupware Collaborative”

by Steve Adams, CEO, RMD Networks and Acting President, Clinical Groupware Collaborative  

I’m writing to extend a warm personal invitation to learn more about the Clinical Groupware Collaborative (CGC).  To-date, purely through word-of-mouth over 40 companies have expressed interest in the CGC, and we expect that you’ll be hearing a lot more about us over the [...]

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The Third Rail in HITECH Implementation: “Please Don’t Make Us All Speak Latin”

By Vince Kuraitis and Steven Waldren MD, MS.  Dr Waldren is Director of the Center for Health Information Technology at the American Academy of Family Practice (AAFP).
Two issues have rightfully surfaced front and center in the public’s understanding of HITECH Act implementation:

” definition of “Meaningful Use” of EHRs, and
” definition of “certification” process for EHRs

…and [...]

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CCHIT’s Latest Gambit

by Glen Laffel MD, PhD
Many of us have enjoyed a few good minutes of fun having our fortunes told by soothsayers who claim they can predict our future based on patterns of tea leaves in a cup or the playing cards we’ve pulled from a deck.

We pay a few dollars for the entertainment and if [...]

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Part II — The Medicare Medical Home Demonstration: Crawling Out From Under the Rock

In Part I of my guest post on The Collaborative Forum blog, I wrote that the Medicare Medical Home Demo is in BIG Trouble. Here’s a recap:

Political reality dictates that the MMHD must save costs.
As currently structured, the MMHD cannot achieve cost savings

In any given year, only a small percentage of patients account for the vast [...]

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“Meaningful Use” Criteria as a Unifying Force

by Vince Kuraitis, Steve Adams, and David C. Kibbe MD, MBA
Over the past several years, many diverse initiatives have arisen offering partial solutions to systemic problems in the U.S. health care non-system. 
We see Meaningful Use Criteria recommended by the HIT Policy Committee as a unifying force for these previously disparate initiatives. These initiatives have included:

Patient Centered Medical Homes [...]

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Medical Home Savings Claims in Medicaid are Not Plausible

by Al Lewis, Disease Management Purchasing Consortium International, Inc.
Medical homes probably do save money in very controlled settings, where the entire team is literally or at least figuratively under one roof, such as Kaiser.  However, the belief that one can overlay a traditional medical home model across an entire state and save money in the [...]

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Incentive to Innovate: Giving Health Reform a Rocket Boost

by Scott Shreeve, MD
We are entering an unprecedented season of change for the United States health care system. Americans are united by their desire to fundamentally reform our current system into one that delivers on the promise of freedom, equity, and best outcomes for best value. In this season of reform, we will see all [...]

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