What once was considered a technology-phobic industry, health care providers are offering exchanges of information and new tools to make consumers more attuned to their health care spending. more»

Companies have developed advanced devices that are capable of monitoring patients' physiological and device information in the hospital, at home and in a variety of other settings, but stakeholders say the market is limited by reluctance among device firms to advance interoperability. more»

Companies have developed advanced devices that are capable of monitoring patients' physiological and device information in the hospital, at home and in a variety of other settings, but stakeholders say the market is limited by reluctance among device firms to advance interoperability. more»

Health care executives at a health technology and innovation forum this week detailed ways to facilitate health IT adoption, Government Health IT's "Notebook" reports. more»

Lately, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about a book I haven’t read: The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, by Brookings Institute think-tanker (and noted ESPN columnist) Gregg Easterbrook. I thought of the book this past weekend while sitting in on a series of thought-provoking lectures by healthcare innovators at the World Healthcare and Innovation Technology Congress 3.0. more»

Lately, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about a book I haven’t read: The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, by Brookings Institute think-tanker (and noted ESPN columnist) Gregg Easterbrook. I thought of the book this past weekend while sitting in on a series of thought-provoking lectures by healthcare innovators at the World Healthcare and Innovation Technology Congress 3.0. more»

Health care executives at a health technology and innovation forum this week detailed ways to facilitate health IT adoption, Government Health IT's "Notebook" reports. more»

An Italian electronic heath care pilot funded by the European Union includes a “smart medicine cabinet” that electronically screens medications for adverse drug interactions as well as automates refill ordering, payment authorization and delivery. more»

An Italian electronic heath care pilot funded by the European Union includes a "smart medicine cabinet" that electronically screens medications for adverse drug interactions as well as automates refill ordering, payment authorization and delivery.

Making it work requires a complex set of identity management and privacy agreements, prerequisites of a future health care Internet where health information can be easily shared and data sifted to hone the performance and results of health care procedures. more»

The winners of the first annual Editor’s Choice Awards were announced at the 3rd Annual World Healthcare Innovation and Technology Congress (WHIT 3.0). The victors were revealed Sunday, Dec. 9, at the conference’s networking gala at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington. The awards are co-sponsored by WHIT 3.0 and Health Data Management. more»

The winners of the first annual Editor’s Choice Awards were announced at the 3rd Annual World Healthcare Innovation and Technology Congress (WHIT 3.0). The victors were revealed Sunday, Dec. 9, at the conference’s networking gala at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington. The awards are co-sponsored by WHIT 3.0 and Health Data Management. more»

No, this isn't another story about Unified Communications, cellular phones, or even healthcare's most wired hospitals. It's about a keynote address I attended this morning at the World Healthcare Innovation and IT Congress in Washington, D.C., at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. more»

More hospitals are selling uncollectible bad debt to companies that specialize in those efforts. Such debt sales, while only for a small percentage of the value of the original amount owed, bring a large check to a facility and clear long-standing debt off an organization’s ledgers. more»

Hospitals are seeing an increase in self-paying customers, increasing the stakes for collections and holding the potential to increase days in accounts receivable. A panel of collection managers from hospitals, speaking at the recent Leadership Summit on Revenue Cycle Innovations in Chicago in late September, said their data indicates more patients are shouldering larger portions of their medical expenses. more»

Speakers lined up for the first Leadership Forum on Medical Tourism say the industry could prompt a movement to transparency in healthcare pricing.

Key topics that the forum will discuss include: a critique of the U.S. healthcare system, healthcare pricing transparency; risk management/liability issues; the relationship between health insurance and medial tourism; accreditation; standards and quality guidelines; and future trends in medical tourism. more»

Of course, chances are slim that US payouts would ever reach this level. However, Gorden, who attended the 5th World Congress Healthcare Quality and P4P conference in Boston on August 6-8, says that less than half of the British bonus would be enough to grab US providers' attention. "When it starts being in the 5% to 10% range, that seems to be the sweet point for getting physicians to be seriously interested in participating," he said. more»

. . .another CMS official told the audience at a recent World Congress pay-for-performance summit in Boston that the agency placed great weight on comments from the field and public before it issued the final rule. more»

According to Ron Anderson M.D., CEO and President of the Parkland Health and Hospital System in Dallas Texas, the increasing demand for services resulting from patient and poverty populations puts a strain on the current system. Speaking at the 2007 Public Health Congress held on July 16-18 in Washington D.C., he elaborated on the need to erase cultural barriers in treating patients, develop a strong public health service, and the necessity to develop a wellness system. more»

In the UK, three year old Isabel Maude was diagnosed with chicken pox, but after the initial diagnosis, Isabel’s illness took a strange turn. Isabel developed a high fever, vomiting, diarrhea, severe pain, and discoloration of the chicken pox rash. Follow-up visits to the doctor and the emergency room reassured the parents that everything was normal and there was nothing to worry about. Like most parents they trusted the physician’s opinions and waited for her to improve. more»