A New York City-based tech nonprofit has released a new digital platform aimed at addressing racism and bias in care. The app, Irth, is aimed at allowing Black and brown obstetrics patients to search for and leave reviews of their OB/GYN, birthing hospitals, postpartum care and pediatricians up to an…
Biden's COVID-19 plan depends on a data-driven approach for efficacy, equity
President Joe Biden released a comprehensive COVID-19 national strategy on his first full day in office, providing a road map aimed at guiding the United States out of the pandemic. The wide-ranging plan is organized around seven main goals, many of which rely on data-sharing as a core tactic. …
St. Luke’s reduces employee burnout and mental health costs with digital health tool
St. Luke’s University Health Network is a nonprofit health system with more than 15,000 employees providing care and services at 12 hospitals and more than 300 outpatient locations. THE PROBLEM Healthcare workers have higher rates of work-related stress, anxiety and depression than the general population. SLUHN has a self-insured medical…
Not all EHR use measures are created equally, study finds
A paper published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that vendors vary in their development maturity of outpatient EHR use measures. Although Epic, Cerner and Allscripts have developed EHR use measures in client-available platforms, researchers found that athenahealth’s are still in development, and eClinicalWorks…
HIPAA right of access: In what looks like a new trend, another costly settlement
Eight may not be enough to get the message across, as the U.S. Health and Human Services has now reached that number of settlements with providers nationwide in the year-plus since it began enforcing HIPAA’s right of access provision. WHY IT MATTERS HHS Office for Civil Rights announced this week…
Using mental health software, practice reduces depression for 59% of patients
For quite some time, Commonwealth Pain & Spine, with 12 locations in Indiana and Kentucky, struggled with how to most efficiently and effectively address the mental health needs of its patients suffering from debilitating chronic pain. THE PROBLEM Staff witnessed the effects on their patients daily and have a commitment…
“Predictive, proactive, preventive care is not just a vision; it’s something that can be done”
Moving towards proactive preventive care, will require a new approach to data governance as there are privacy implications and interoperability considerations. These were discussed at today’s HIMSS & Health 2.0 European Digital Event Evening Keynote: ‘Toward Precision Health – Pushing the Frontiers of Privacy, Interoperability and Digital Literacy’. The Speakers were: Mary…
Teladoc completes InTouch Health acquisition
Nearly six months after it was first announced, pre-pandemic – with telehealth now surging at hospitals and practices nationwide – Teladoc Health completed its acquisition of InTouch Health on July 1. WHY IT MATTERS The purchase price consists of approximately $150 million in cash and 4.6 million shares of Teladoc…
Mount Sinai seeks citywide engagement with app to track COVID-19 spread in NYC
To help better understand transmission patterns and help coordinate its own response to the COVID-19 outbreak proliferating across New York City, Mount Sinai Health System has enlisted its own data scientists, engineers and clinicians to develop a new app aimed at halting the spread. WHY IT MATTERS Mount Sinai is…
Tech heavyweights, others call on HHS to release info blocking rules
More than two dozen of healthcare organizations and technology companies sent an open letter this past week to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Management and Budget, urging them to quickly finalize rules allowing application programming interface access to patient records. The letter, signed…
Epic continues campaign for changes to forthcoming ONC info blocking rules
The proposed 21st Century Cures rules around information blocking, interoperability and patient access were released nearly a year ago – and the final rules are expected soon. But recently, a major healthcare player has been getting more vocal about how it thinks the forthcoming regulations need to be changed. On…