The long-awaited $20 billion "down payment" slated for health IT won't kick in until 2011, but it's an exciting time nevertheless for healthcare organizations eyeing new IT projects. One recent survey finds healthcare companies are allocating 30 percent of their IT budgets to new projects, with 70 percent slated for ongoing IT operations. With mobile point-of-care initiatives garnering increasing attention at hospitals, it's encouraging to know healthcare remains one of the few key industries likely to boast job growth over the short term. But will industry growth necessarily translate into health IT jobs? Read »

National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal said on Monday that the stimulus package should encourage researchers to study the efficacy of health IT tools in different health care provider settings. As if on cue, WebMD Health News ran a report on Tuesday, reminding us that the cost of job-based health insurance continued to take a bigger bite from workers and employers this year, rising 5 percent for family coverage. This Sunday, TV's favorite president will make not one, not two, but five separate televised appearances--ABC News' “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” CNN's “State of the Nation”, CBS's “Face the Nation”, NBC's “Meet the Press” and Univision's “Al Punto with Jorge Ramos"--to press his health reform agenda. While pretty much everyone agrees on the need to cut healthcare costs, the question remains as to whether or not the hotly contested health reform bill--H.R. 3200--can deliver on its many promises without further bankrupting the nation. Read »

Angry Americans have been turning out in startling numbers to voice their dissatisfaction with the government's approach to health reform. As they continue making their lack of confidence in the proposed health reform legislation known, several academic medical centers and community health systems have forged a coalition to join the debate over the direction of healthcare information technology. The Academic and Community Health Technology Alliance (ACHTA) wants to make sure the debate reflects the fact that, over the past five years, its founding members have funneled more than $1.2 billion dollars into the deployment of healthcare IT. Read »

The Yale University School of Medicine recently enrolled 1,650 heart failure patients as part of a National Institutes of Health sponsored study to examine the impact of device-free remote patient monitoring on improving chronic care management and reducing hospitalizations of HF patients. If done right, the study could bring into harmony two opposing groups: those who claim RPM could save the U.S. healthcare systems billions of dollars annually, and those who say prove it. Read »

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius hopes that shifting the enforcement of the HIPAA security and privacy rules from CMS to the HHS' Office of Civil Rights will improve efficiency and reduce duplication in the healthcare system. While emphasizing the need for increased security of EHRs is a step in the right direction, many health officials are concerned that the federal government has not yet proposed mechanisms to protect patient data. Read »

Intel, Cisco, IBM and the trade group Tech America are among the organizations urging the Senate Finance Committee to incorporate new payment methods into health reform legislation as part of an effort to boost the adoption of telemedicine. Read »

Telehealth technology and funding initiatives have received a fair amount of news coverage for not only offering health systems a great way to reap cost reductions and efficiency gains, but a smart way to promote health reform. Now, Cisco and UnitedHealth Group officials are set to build a nationwide telehealth network to deliver healthcare services to rural and underserved areas. Read »

Forget EMRs. The healthcare revolution doesn't reside in electronic medical records, but in using technologies like P2P to determine how to cut costs to make service more affordable. So says Keith Lemer, president of WellNet Healthcare, which has begun targeting the Web 2.0 movement with the release of Point to Point Healthcare, an offering the Bethesda, Md.-based company describes as a “Facebook-like social networking platform” for healthcare consumers. Read »

Common sense has scored a victory in the Keystone State, where the Pennsylvania House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill that would ban the forced implantation of identification devices in people. The bill, which was introduced by Democratic State Rep. Babette Josephs, has drawn support from the VeriChip Corporation, a Delray Beach, Fla.-based provider of radio frequency identification (RFID) systems for healthcare. Read »

With an August deadline looming, Congress is expected to return from the Fourth of July holiday ready to take on health reform with a renewed sense of urgency. No easy task, given the complexity of the issues, the controversy around several key policy initiatives and estimates that reform costs will exceed $1 trillion over 10 years. But even as the government struggles to advance its health reform agenda, medical device makers are forging a new partnership with the cell phone industry that will enable doctors to remotely monitor their patients' heart rhythms, body temperature and breathing rates.  If successful, the alliance could save billions in hospitalization costs. Read »