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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 Health Care Act of 2006 and amended by section 133 of the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008. Specifically, section 1302 of […]

Senator Grassley: You’re on Track About EMR Problems, But Here Are Some More Questions to Ask

An article in today’s Washington Post links to a letter written by Senator Charles E. Grassley.

The letter is directed at 10 EMR (electronic medical record) vendors, and asks very pointed questions about whether the vendors have been negligent in not addressing patient safety issues in their technologies.

Senator Grassley, you have the scent and you’re on the trail.  There are several other questions you should be asking these vendors:

Will Mobile/Wireless Apps Be the Breakthrough for Retail eHealth & Remote Monitoring?

Two slides from Mary Meeker’s presentation at Web 2.0 this week really caught my attention.

Compare the proportions that “users pay” for desktop Internet services vs. mobile Internet services (the area inside the red lines — click on the graphics to see larger versions).

 

What do these slides tell us?

Complimentary Webinar: Introduction to Clinical Groupware and the Clinical Groupware Collaborative

BrightTALK is sponsoring a complimentary Electronic Health Record Summit this Tuesday, October 20, 2009.

David C. Kibbe MD, MBA and I will be presenting “Introduction to Clinical Groupware and the Clinical Groupware Collaborative”

Clinical groupware is a new and evolving model for the development and deployment of health information technology (HIT) platforms and applications having the following characteristics:

Use of the Internet and the web for EHR technology.

Explicit design for information sharing and online communication among providers and patients/consumers.

A modular […]

We’re Building a REALLY BIG Health Internet!

How big a network will the Health Internet (aka National Health Information Network) be?

My BOTE (back-of-the-envelope) calculation is that this network could consist of about 301 million nodes.  Here’s my math (pls. clarify or amplify):

300 million individuals in U.S.
700 K doctors
5 K hospitals
295 K — other B2B healthcare entities

Very rough…but I hope you get the point.

So let’s put into perspective press releases from Google or Microsoft announcing that they have developed new “partnerships” (i.e.nodes in the network) for Google Health or Microsoft HealthVault. As an example, […]

The Big Idea in Understanding “Accountable Care Organizations”

Here’s the big idea: accountable care organizations (ACOs) are about creating accountability.

ACOs of various types are being proposed in national health reform legislation. For all you ever wanted to know about ACOs, read How to Create Accountable Care Organizations from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform.   I spent an hour and a half poring over the details of this excellent report written by Harold Miller.

My mistaken impression has been to focus on the organizational form of ACOs, rather than their objectives.  Organizational form is relevant […]

HITECH Health IT Legislation: Opportunities for the DMAA Community

Dr. Don Storey and I spoke at the at The Forum 09 conference in San Diego earlier this week. The DMAA publication “The Continuum” had an excellent writeup of our enthusiastically received presentation. 

Here’s a copy of our PowerPoint slides…

HITECH Health IT Legislation: Opportunities for the DMAA Community
View more presentations from vincek.

and here’s DMAA’s writeup:

Helping physicians and hospitals meet the “meaningful use” criteria for federal support for health information technology under recently passed legislation represents a keen opportunity for the population health management industry, presenters at […]

Lifemasters Bankruptcy: Will CMS Earn Reputation as a Good Business Partner or Thug?

In my post from Monday on LifeMasters seeking Chapter 11, I dropped a BTW comment.

The part that’s puzzling to me is the statement that LifeMasters owes $125 M to CMS.  That’s hard to figure…the company only participated in MHS for a few months, and to my knowledge MHS is the only Medicare demo that required guaranteed savings (i.e., payback if targets aren’t hit).  

I really have to stretch my imagination to compute how CMS ran the tab to such an astronomical number. It raises […]

Latest Health Wonk Review at Healthcare Technology News

Rich Elmore plays tribute to Senator Kennedy in the latest edition of the Health Wonk Review.  Read wonker perspectives on health care reform.

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 coming months.

Our meeting will take place next Tuesday, September 22, 6 PM in conjunction with The Forum 09, the annual meeting of DMAA: […]