Bill to reduce EHR burden clears subcommittee
Editor's Note The House Energy & Commerce Health Subcommittee on September 13 approved legislation that would remove a requirement to make meaningful use standards for electronic health records (EHRs) more stringent over time, the September 13 AHA News Now reports. In a letter of support for the bill, which is…
Children’s Hospital Colorado alerts patients of data breach
Editor's Note Officials at Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora are sending notifications to nearly 3,400 patient families about a data breach that may have compromised their health information, according to the September 11 Becker’s Health IT & CIO Review. On July 11, investigators found an unauthorized person may have accessed…
FDA to staff new digital health unit
Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is filling 13 positions in a new digital health unit that was created as part of the FDA Reauthorization Act of 2017, the September 11 FierceHealthcare reports. The FDA intends to build a group of experts who are experienced with software lifecycle…
Ransomware attacks: How to protect your medical device systems
Ransomware is a form of computer malware used to make data, software, and information technology (IT) assets unavailable to users. It uses encryption of data to hold systems hostage with an associated ransom demand, often in Bitcoin (a virtual currency that is difficult to trace). This encryption is used to…
Medicare ‘meaningful use’ data to be submitted via QualityNet
Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced August 7 that hospitals and critical access hospitals participating in Medicare’s Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program will submit their “meaningful use” data via QualityNet rather than the EHR Incentive Program Registration and Attestation System beginning January 2, 2018,…
AHRQ: Cost trends for inpatient stays
Editor's Note From 2005 to 2014, the average inflation-adjusted cost of a hospital inpatient stay increased by 12.7%, from $9,500 to $10,900, according to new statistics from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Average costs for stays increased: 16% for Medicaid 18% for private insurance 8% for Medicare…
Safety of nipple-sparing mastectomy
Editor's Note Women with breast cancer who have nipple-sparing mastectomies have a low rate of cancer recurrence in the first 5 years, this study finds. Of 311 patients with nipple-sparing mastectomies analyzed, 17 developed a recurrence of their cancer at 51 months median follow-up. Estimated disease-free survival was 95.7% at…
Analysis finds unplanned returns to the OR overestimated
Editor's Note In this single institution study, the most common reasons for unplanned return to the OR (uROR) were infection and hemorrhage. However, the researchers found that a large number of cases were incorrectly classified as uROR, when they were instead planned reoperations without adequate documentation. Using uROR as reported…
Cost data persuade surgeons to be more frugal
Surgeons usually don’t have a high awareness of costs, partly because they haven’t had an easy way to know them. An unfortunate byproduct of this lack of knowledge can be higher OR costs. “Imagine what it’s like if, when you go to the grocery store, there are no price tags,…
Racial disparities in surgical mortality narrowing
Editor's Note Despite concerns that quality improvement efforts may widen disparities, national racial disparities in surgical mortality are narrowing, this study finds. Using Medicare claims data from 2005 to 2014, Harvard researchers found that, overall, national mortality trends improved for both black and white patients by 0.10% and 0.07% per…
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- Renewed push for healthcare price transparency faces familiar challenges
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