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DoD-VA integration failure is no laughing matter, even to Stewart

Last week, I had a clip from “The Colbert Report” because Dr. Eric Topol appeared on the show to discuss digital health in a lively segment with Stephen Colbert. (I reported on it for InformationWeek Healthcare. The editors told me to have fun, so I did.) This time around, I’m going to give Jon Stewart equal time, not because I feel like having more fun with “fake news,” but because the host of “The Daily Show” had some insightful comments about the failure of the Military Health System and the Veterans Health Administration to get their EHRs to interoperate.

Though his job is to make people laugh—and ostensibly to upset conservatives—Stewart has been an outspoken advocate for America’s veterans, and when he heard the Obama administration has created a massive backlog for disabled veterans to receive VA health benefits, he went off. As far as I can tell, he got everything right, too.

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April 1, 2013 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Filed Under: Barack Obama  EMR/EHR  health information exchange  health IT  Healthcare IT  interoperability  video
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I’m speaking at the Health Technology Forum in SF

If you’re in Northern California, or plan to be, I will be on a panel at the Health Technology Forum’s 2013 Innovation Conference: Platforms for the Underserved on Friday, April 19, in San Francisco. I’ll be sharing the podium with Jan Oldenburg, Aetna’s VP for provider and patient engagement, in a breakout session on patient engagement. (There will be at least one other panelist, still to be determined.)

We’re still working on the details, but I suspect this session will cover what it means to be an engaged patient, the 5 percent portal usage requirement in Stage 2 of meaningful use, the relationship of patient engagement to patient satisfaction and the technologies and strategies that are and are not working. Since it is an innovation conference, I might have to play the role of reality checker like I often do when I venture into the Bay Area. :)

 

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March 29, 2013 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Filed Under: consumerism  EMR/EHR  health 2.0  health reform  Healthcare IT  Innovation  meaningful use  patient safety  public health
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Topol visits Colbert for a heart, ear exam

You asked for it, so here’s the video of Dr. Eric Topol on “The Colbert Report” from last night. Check out coverage by Jonah Comstock at MobiHealthNews.

 

 

Kudos to Stephen Colbert for asking the question about insurance companies mining personal data.

In case you missed it, here‘s the “Rock Center with Brian Williams” segment on Topol from January.

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March 27, 2013 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Filed Under: data mining  health IT  health reform  Healthcare IT  humor  imaging  Innovation  mobile  physicians  video
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HIMSS CIO survey visualized

I already reported the results of the annual HIMSS healthcare CIO survey in a story I wrote for InformationWeek the other day. Since everybody seems to love infographics these days, HIMSS produced one visualizing some of the highlights, including the finding that two-thirds of U.S. hospitals already have met Stage 1 meaningful use. Based on this, I’m guessing that close to 90 percent should be there by the end of the year, which means that CMS and ONC will have achieved their objectives for Stage 1, at least on the hospital side. (Of course, the physician part is proving to be much more difficult.) Someone in the know at ONC told me last night that people in that office are expecting 80 percent hospital success by the time fiscal year 2013 closes Sept. 30.

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March 7, 2013 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Filed Under: ARRA  CMS  EMR/EHR  health IT  health reform  Healthcare IT  HHS  HIMSS  hospitals  ICD-10  meaningful use  physicians  regulations
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Video: Live from HIMSS with Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush

NEW ORLEANS—I made my debut for the new Health Innovation Broadcast Consortium last night with a live webcast interview with Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush. As usual, I didn’t need to prepare much for the interview because Bush almost interviews himself, so I just decided to wing it. Also as usual, we kept it light, as each of us had a beer in our hand, since we were at the House of Blues in the French Quarter, where Athenahealth had its annual HIMSS party. (This year featured a jazz funeral marking the “death of software.”) But we did discuss some topics actually relevant to health IT, including meaningful use and Athenahealth’s recent acquisition of Epocrates. Enjoy.

Watch live streaming video from hibc at livestream.com
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March 4, 2013 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Filed Under: Accountable Care Organizations  ARRA  athenahealth  clinical decision support  cloud computing  EMR/EHR  health reform  Healthcare IT  HIMSS  Innovation  Jonathan Bush  meaningful use  mergers and acquisitions  mobile  Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act  reimbursement  vendors  video
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Podcast: HIMSS CEO Steve Lieber: 2013 edition

Once again, as has become custom, I sat down with HIMSS CEO Steve Lieber at the organization’s Chicago headquarters the week before the annual HIMSS conference to discuss the conference as well as important trends and issues in the health IT industry. I did the interview Monday.

Here it is late Friday and I’m finally getting around to posting the interview, but it’s still in plenty of time for you to listen before you get on your flight to New Orleans for HIMSS13, which starts Monday but which really gets going with pre-conference activities on Sunday. At the very least, you have time to download the podcast and listen on the plane or even in the car on the way to the airport. As a bonus, the audio quality is better than usual.

Podcast details: Interview with HIMSS CEO Steve Lieber about HIMSS13 and the state of health IT. Recorded Feb. 25, 2013, at HIMSS HQ in Chicago. MP3, stereo, 128 kbps, 46.0 MB. Running time: 50:17.

1:00        Industry growth and industry consolidation
2:50        mHIMSS
3:45        Why Dr. Eric Topol is keynoting
6:00        New Orleans as a HIMSS venue
6:50        Changes at HIMSS13, including integration of HIT X.0 into the main conference
8:55        Focus on the patient experience
9:35        Global Health Forum and other “conferences within a conference”
13:00     Criticisms of meaningful use, EHRs and health IT in general
17:00     Progress in the last five years
20:45     Healthcare reform, including payment reform
22:30     Why private payers haven’t demanded EHR usage since meaningful use came along
23:50     Payers and data
26:28     Potential for delay of 2015 penalties for not meeting meaningful use
29:15     Benefits of EHRs
30:40     Progress on interoperability between EHRs and medical devices
32:52     Efficiency gains from health IT
35:27     Home-based monitoring in the framework of accountable care
36:55     Consumerism in healthcare
39:40     Accelerating pace of change
41:10     Entrepreneurs, free markets and the economics of healthcare
43:25     Informed, empowered patients and consumer outreach
46:30     Fundamental change in care delivery

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March 1, 2013 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Filed Under: Accountable Care Organizations  ARRA  care coordination  consumerism  EMR/EHR  health information exchange  health IT  health reform  Healthcare IT  HIMSS  hospitals  Innovation  interoperability  meaningful use  mobile  ONC  Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act  patient safety  physicians  podcast  quality  reimbursement  remote monitoring  vendors
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Maybe Topol and Agus are rock stars after all?

I saw this advertisement on bus shelter near my home in Chicago Tuesday night:

 

Topol-Agus

Yes, that’s Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, and Dr. David Agus, co-founder of Navigenics, flanking pop star Seal, in an ad for fashion house Geoffrey Beene’s Rock Stars of Science program. (The www.rockstarsofscience.org URL currently redirects to Geoffrey Beene’s home page, but the Facebook page still works.) The photo actually is from a GQ shoot in 2009, as readers of MobiHealthNews might recall, but I’ve only noticed the outdoor ads recently. I guess the band must be on hiatus right now.

FWIW, Topol is keynoting Tuesday morning at HIMSS13 in New Orleans.

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February 26, 2013 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Filed Under: genomics  health IT  Healthcare IT  Innovation  mobile  personalized medicine
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New Media Meetup at HIMSS13

Next week at HIMSS13, John Lynn, el queso grande of the Healthcare Scene blog network, of which I am a member, is hosting his fourth annual New Media Meetup, and readers of this and all affiliated blogs are invited. It’s Tuesday, March 5 at 6 p.m. at Mulate’s Party Hall, right by the Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. Click here for details and to register. I should be there for at least a little while. Deadlines beckon, but I’ve got to have a little bit of fun in the Big Easy, right? Laissez les bons temps rouler! (That’s three languages in one paragraph. What do I win?)

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I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Filed Under: blogging  HIMSS  social media
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Misfit Wearables gets some ‘Jeopardy!’ love

Misfit Shine, the first product from Sonny Vu’s Misfit Wearables, was part of a clue on a recent episode of “Jeopardy!”

The reference is at just before the 9:00 mark of this video.

Jeopardy! (Season 29.23-5) – Jason, Keith… by R38102

A tip of the hat to Paul Sonnier of the LinkedIn Digital Health Group for sharing this with me.

 

 

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February 25, 2013 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Filed Under: consumerism  mobile  social media  video
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Chart: Current state telemedicine legislation

Here’s a handy chart from the American Telemedicine Association showing the current status of telemedicine legislation in all 50 states plus D.C. Specifically, it shows which states have already mandated private and Medicaid insurance coverage for telemedicine services, as well as which states are considering such a law. (Medicare policy of course is set at the federal level.) This information is current as of this month.

 

State telemedicine legislation

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February 21, 2013 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Filed Under: Legislation  reimbursement  Telehealth
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