Christopher Koller, Rhode Island’s Health Insurance Commissioner, speaking at the Public Health Congress on July 16, 2007 in Washington D.C., said “the Governor’s goal is to have health IT for the majority of individuals in the state by 2010.” To help move health IT forward, the state issued a Request for Proposal on July 11th to form a RHIO to manage the contract with the State’s health information exchange vendor. The RFP is due on August 28, 2007. more»

Privacy should not be considered an “obstacle” to patient data sharing and it is not a trade-off for electronic records, according to speakers at The Road to Interoperability conference held in Boston last week. more»

Lack of agreement on IT standards also is frustrating health leaders. At the World Health Care Congress in April, Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen called for a set of realistic standards: "Enough with grants and pilot programs," he insisted, in urging action by the healthcare community. Similarly, Reed Tuckson, chief of medical affairs for UnitedHealth Group, blasted the proliferation of performance measurement initiatives as likely to drive healthcare costs "through the roof." more»

Rural healthcare systems don't measure up when compared to their urban counterparts, several health-sector experts say. "We have an inequitable system across the country," said Michael Meit, co-director of the Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis, a division of the National Opinion Research Center, a non-profit organization affiliated with the University of Chicago. more»

A burgeoning industry of wellness advisers, counselors and consultants is booming as corporate America tries to increase productivity and control insurance costs by helping its employees get healthy and shed pounds. more»

Consumerism cannot succeed unless the nation's top two purchasers of health care - private employers and the federal government - demand that individuals have electronic access to their information and stop doing business with providers who don't comply, according to executives from Intel, Google and Microsoft, who participated in a panel discussion on consumerism during the World Health Care Congress in Washington, D.C., this spring. more»

Dr. Linda Springer Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, oversees eight million enrollees requiring coverage for healthcare. Her priorities are to provide the best possible care at the lowest cost, provide choices for insurance plans, and at the same time, protect the employee’s personal data. Dr. Springer presented her views at the 4th Annual World Health Care Congress co-sponsored by the Wall Street Journal on April 22-24 in Washington D.C. more»

More than half of the California physicians involved in a year-old pay-for-performance consortium have reported using new healthcare information technology to schedule patient visits and appointment reminders. more»

Quality measurement and pay-for-performance are not without their problems, said participants of a panel chaired yesterday at the World Health Care Congress by a Thomas Valuck, MD, JD, the director of Value-Based Purchasing at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. more»

A panel on competition, moderated by John Iglehart, the founding editor of Health Affairs, included Michael Porter, a Harvard professor and a leading authority on competitive strategy, who said that 21st-century medicine is being delivered with 19th-century organisation and management. What's called for, he said, is a fundamental restructuring of health systems rather than incremental improvement, and an emphasis on value and on health outcomes per dollar spent. more»

Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurance plans in four states are integrating the medical data of more than 11 million clients into a single electronic health records (EHR) system as they look to eliminate unnecessary treatment and encourage preventive care. more»

The retail giants want to tend to your minor pains and miseries, and CVS last week was the first to make a play in the Southland. Health clinics opened Wednesday in five Chicago-area CVS stores, including ones in Mokena and Lockport. more»

Sometime back we had carried a story about Wal-mart’s foray into healthcare. This program took off in 2005 as a pilot project which involved the lease of medical space in a few Wal-Mart stores. Today there are 76 clinics actively functioning at the Wal mart stores across 12 different states. more»

At the 4th Annual World Health Care Congress, Leo Scott, the President and CEO of Wal-Mart disclosed their plan to possibly enhance their pilot program currently in place by opening a total of 2,000 health clinics within their stores over the next five to seven years. more»

As I recall, it was sometime in the 1970s when Dr. Walter McClure’s idea of “Buying Right” emerged from the Interstudy think tank in Minnesota. This was after I left said tank, but when I still had occasional contact with its thinkers, including McClure. I expressed my doubt at the time that it would catch on, and though it was adopted by many employers at the time, it was ahead of its time. more»

Every once in a while, someone at a conference makes a statement that stands out from the usual platitudinous palaver. Earlier this week, that honor belonged to William Plested, the president of the American Medical Association. At the World Health Care Congress in Washington, DC, he was asked to comment on the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services' efforts to set quality standards to inform (and, let's face it, one day determine) how doctors get reimbursed by the government's health care programs. He declared: more»

The familiar duel between employer- and individual-based healthcare played out on stage this week, but this time, the audience was high-ranking business executives who overwhelmingly said they believe employers have a role to play in healthcare. more»

At the 4th Annual World Health Care Congress, Leo Scott, the President and CEO of Wal-Mart disclosed their plan to possibly enhance their pilot program currently in place by opening a total of 2,000 health clinics within their stores over the next five to seven years. more»

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. ’s top executive called Tuesday for sweeping improvements in health-care information technology as one step toward reining in rising medical costs. more»