There has been a significant outcry against the proposed ACO regulations: everything's wrong and nothing's right about them, or so some would have us believe.Today's "nattering nabobs of negativism" focus on: the estimated price tag for complying with the regulatory requirements (IT and other infrastructure incuded), the slim chance of success by ACOs in righting the wrongs of decades of bloat in the health care system, ...
David Harlow
Pharmacies selling prescription information to data mining companies
Walgreens is being sued by customers who are not happy that their prescription information – even though it has been de-identified – is being sold by Walgreens to data-mining companies.The data privacy and security concerns surrounding the transfer of de-identified data are significant. To "de-identify" what is otherwise protected health information under HIPAA, some outfits will simply strip data of 18 types of identifiers listed in federal ...
How the ACO regulations set the stage for Accountable Care Organizations
ACO regulations and related federal issuances hit the street, after several months of waiting -- from CMS, OIG, FTC, DOJ and IRS.They cover the waterfront, ranging from the central regulation defining the structure and workings of the ACO, to limited Stark self-referral ban and anti-kickback statute waivers in the fraud and abuse arena, to new frameworks for antitrust analysis, to rules governing joint ventures involving taxable and tax-exempt ...
Teaching patient safety starts in medical school
Ten years after the release of the IOM report To Err is Human, which documented the toll taken by medical errors in this country, the question remains: What can be done to reverse the trend of ever-increasing morbidity and mortality due to medical errors?Last December, a look back over the decade since the release of To Err is Human -- and a steady medical error death rate of about ...
What doctors should expect with health care reform
What should health care providers be doing in anticipation of the likely passage of an historic health reform bill?There are at least three possibilities: (1) Lament the passing of the good old days and oppose it; (2) Insist that it isn't good enough because it is lacking some key provision (tort reform; SGR replacement; robust public option); or (3) Embrace it, because incrementalism works, and prepare for what's coming down ...
Protecting the security of electronic patient data
Originally published on HCPLive.comIf your patient records aren’t already stored digitally, they are likely to be digitized soon. There is a tremendous push by the federal government—as well as by some private payors and self-insured employers—to get all healthcare providers wired in the near future, in order to better coordinate patient care, improve outcomes, and “bend the cost curve” all at the same time. There are some financial incentives in ...
How the patient-centered medical home can improve our health care system
Dr. Paul Grundy is on a mission -- a mission to promote the patient-centered medical home model that he has been instrumental in developing and rolling out, in his dual role as Director of Healthcare, Technology and Strategic initiatives for IBM Global Wellbeing Services and Health Benefits, and President of the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative.I had the opportunity to speak with him last month (here's the transcript and ...
What can John Mackey and Whole Foods learn from publicizing their views on health reform?
Today's health care communications lesson is brought to you courtesy of Whole Foods ... I mean John Mackey.John Mackey's stepped in it again. Last week, Mackey, the libertarian CEO of natural-foods behemoth Whole Foods, wrote an op-ed piece on health reform for The Wall Street Journal. But Mackey felt it necessary to republish it on his blog because the Journal editors lightly edited it, Journal headline writers wrote a ...
