e-CareManagement blog

Chronic Disease Management • Technology • Strategy • Issues and Trends

Is HITECH Working? #6: HITECH and Health Reform Objectives are Synergistic

by Vince Kuraitis JD, MBA and David C. Kibbe MD, MBA
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….or to be more specific, HITECH is synergistic with payment reform that could come from the recently passed national health care reform legislation — the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
We’ll keep this post fairly short and try to avoid many of the more divisive aspects of [...]

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An Avatar-Inspired Health Wonk Review

Check out the latest Health Wonk Review penned by Dr. Jaan Sidorov over at the Disease Management Care blog. I commend Dr. Sidorov for his selection of a new personal photo on his blog — very handsome, and certainly a better presentation than this earlier photo from his youth.
 

Tags: disease management

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CMS Shelves Medicare Medical Home Demonstration

I just received an email from CMS announcing the latest official word on the Medicare Medical Home Demonstration (MMHD):
10/26/2009 – In Washington, the efforts to reform health care and health insurance include proposed legislative language that would have an impact on the Medicare Medical Home Demonstration as described in section 204 of the Tax Relief and [...]

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Blog Advisory Board

Jim Giuffré, MPH — Healthwise
Steve Hards — Telecare Aware
Rose Higgins, RN, BSN, MPM — iMetrikus
Jim Jacobson, JD — Holland & Knight
Ken Joslyn, MD, MPH — Medica Health Plans
David C. Kibbe, MD MBA — The Kibbe Group
Joseph Kvedar, MD — Center for Connected Health
Al Lewis, JD — Disease Management Purchasing Consortium
Ariel Linden, DrPH, MS — Linden [...]

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Medicare Health Support (MHS) Claims Another Victim: LifeMasters Files for Chapter 11

Updated 6:10 pm, September 14, 2009
One bad deal can ruin your day.
Today, LifeMasters filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.  According to its press release:
“The Chapter 11 filing is the most efficient path for the company to restructure liabilities that are a result of Demonstration Projects previously performed under contracts with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid [...]

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SPEAKING

Frequent keynoter, speaker, panel moderator at 40+ industry conferences in the past 3 years
Opening keynote speaker – 2004-2009 Healthcare Unbound Conferences
Speaker at corporate events sponsored by:

Guidant
Roche Diagnostics
Centocor
Arizona Hospital Association
Gateway Computer
Connecticut Hospital Association,
Walgreens National Advisory Board
Blue Cross Blue Shield Association
HomMed Honeywell
Spacelabs
…and others

Facilitation/consulting experience leading strategic planning sessions for management, Boards and physicians
 
TOPICS – Healthcare Enters the [...]

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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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EHR 2.0: Thinking Outside the Cat Box

One of the potential dangers of limiting $17 B HITECH federal stimulus funds to electronic health records (EHRs) is the risk of locking-in outdated technologies. Let’s consider what this might mean.
If you think of today’s EHR technology as EHR 1.0, what might EHR 2.0 look like? This post presents a number of innovative ways to conceptualize [...]

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How Much Health-Related Productivity Loss is Really Avoidable? And Why Should I Care??

by John E. Riedel
Study breaks new ground in calculating the "normal impairment factor."
We know that poor health accounts for a considerable amount of productivity loss-anywhere from 1 ½ to 3 times direct medical costs.  The potential for disease prevention and disease management programs to reduce productivity loss has, for obvious reasons, caught the [...]

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