Americans Count Health Care as Their greatest Debt Burden

Ask a friends, colleagues or relatives what their greatest financial worry is regarded to the upcoming U.S. Presidential election, and chances are most will say "health care."

That is according to a new report out from GoBankingRates. "Americans are most worried about health care prices affecting the U.S. economy over other financial hot topics like tax increases and income inequality," GOBankingRates.com says.

Here is how consumers rate their financial concerns

* Health care costs – 31 percent say it's their chief financial concern

* Social Security benefits – 16 percent

* Income inequality – 15 percent

* Tax increases – 13 percent

* Higher education costs – 13 percent

* Military spending – 11 percent

"Our study found that 'health care costs' was chosen as most significant twice as much as the other 5 financial burdens," said Kristen Bonner, research lead for the GOBankingRates Financial Burdens Survey. "Even more alarming, every age group, with the exception of people under 24 years old and people over 65, chose health care costs as most significant more than any other factor."

That mirrors the outcomes of a separate study from CareCredit, a health care credit card company. Among other things, the study shows 52.6 percent of survey respondents have delayed out-of-pocket health or dental treatment due to the cost. Additionally, if they had to undergo an elective health care treatment today that costs $1,000 out-of-pocket, 44.7 percent would not be able to afford it.

Resoluting data integration key to victory for PMI

The Precision Medicine Initiative, the Obama administration’s attempt to map the genomes of a million Americans and make the data present to researchers, is about much more than genomics, according to National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, MD.

Acquiring the vision of the PMI will require significant advances in data integration, and NIH is focusing attempts to make advances in this arena.

NIH plans to make a participant technologies center to leverage the ability to collect information from mobile phone and sensor technologies for the study. Collins appreciated that one of the challenges that the PMI cohort must address is how to synthesize EHR, genomic, mHealth, and wearable sensor data.

“We have not been capable to do that kind of integration of all those data types together with electronic health records,” he added. “There are no laws of physics here that will get in the way of our being capable to achieve that. It is just going to be a very tough data wrangling issue.” However, Collins discussed that “if you can make it work for a million people, well you ought to be able to make it work for 330 million” Americans.

How big data is making better the mental healthcare

Three things get Jen Hyatt out of bed in the morning – her teenage daughter, big numbers and uncertainty about the dominant paradigm of the healthcare.

Hyatt explained the "intractable issue in healthcare" of focusing on sickness rather than on healthy behaviors. But she also feels that technology could have a transformative role.

When Hyatt heard the figure, in the year 2006, that 50% of people with a diagnosable mental health issue did not even reach their primary care doctor, she decided to do something about it. She founded Big White Wall in the year 2007 in an attempt to reach out to these people, as well as to "shift from a model of sickness to one in which people who need help are supported".

The online community, one of few approved by the NHS, assists the users anonymously seek support from peers and therapists.

Big White Wall gives people "a choice" in the kind of treatment they get, said Hyatt. Cognitive behavioural therapy, while often successful, is not a panacea.

Hyatt is now working on a newapp for teenagers, called amo that draws on positive psychology, behavioural psychology and neuroscience. "We require looking at applying technology to help," she stated. "Let's not move deckchairs around on the Titantic – let's address the big numbers."

The Pentagon's architect of healthcare ready to step down

In his final week as assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, Dr. Jonathan Woodson achieved, in part, an objective he had sought for more than 5 years: a softening in Congress to the prospect of raising health care fees for military families and retirees.

Woodson did not propose Tricare fee hikes every single budget cycle he was in office just to dig into the troops' wallets or make retirees angry, he informed Military Times earlier this month. He did it to secure the military's health care system and position it to meet the issues of war while “pivoting to the future.”

"Sometimes," Woodson stated, "when you make a vision that is over the horizon, people consider that you are crazy. The key is to present that vision in increments so you can achieve your goals."

When Woodson steps down, effective Sunday, he will leave a health system that looks largely the same as it did in the year 2010 — at least to the average patient. Military personnel continue to give care to troops and beneficiaries in military facilities, and Tricare pays for community care.

But the system is vastly different. A new Defense Health Agency provides support facilities for the military medical commands. Health facilities in the greatest military markets fall under regional umbrella organizations. And this year, Tricare will be consolidated into 2 regions, with more sufferers being reassigned to military hospitals and clinics for primary care.

Paychecks are not going up a lot but health-care prices sure are

If there are inflation winds in the air, it would be difficult to tell by worker paychecks.

Employment compensation prices rose just 1.9% on an annualized basis in the 1^st quarter, after a 0.6% gain for the 3-month period, in accordance to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics' employment cost index reading Friday. That is a sharp decrease from the year-ago period, which indicated a 2.6% gain, though the quarterly rise was in line with Wall Street expectations.

The drop in growth came from both salary and benefits, which rose 2% and 1.7% respectively, for the 12-month period. That was against gains of 2.6% and 2.7% for the year-ago period.

And while wages, salaries and benefits were stuck in neutral, the index demonstrated that employer costs for health care were on the rise, gaining 3.3% in the period compared to a 2.5% increase for the previous 12-month cycle.

The numbers are important because Federal Reserve officials are searching for signs of inflation, specifically in wages, as a cue for when it would be suitable to raise interest rates again. The Fed hiked its rate target in the month of December but has held off since amid weak economic growth and little signs of positive inflation.

Why Claims Accuracy Testing, QA Is not proving Useful for Healthcare

Healthcare agencies require getting back to basics when it comes to establishing and implementing their claims accuracy testing and quality assurance programs.

Let’s confront it. Testing is not working.  That is the bitter truth about the healthcare organization and its track record on claims accuracy testing and quality assurance.

The difficult truth is that this problem is costly – with a cost tag of over $275 billion in the United States of America each year, in accordance to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services – and with the latest ICD-10 medical coding and other industry alterations, waste and costly mistakes are potentially even harder.

To start to comprehend the underlying reasons of this multi-billion-dollar issue, we conducted meta-analysis of 78 QA and testing assessments conducted within the healthcare industry dating from the year 2009 through the year 2015.

These 78 distinctive assessments from both the payer and contributor sides covered each phase of life-cycle testing of commercial healthcare data and claims procedure applications and platforms, their changes and customizations, interfaces to other networks that are utilized along the monetary path connecting the healthcare contributors to insurance payers.

Testing issues that invest to or even enable this multi-billion-dollar quality assurance issues appear in every section of testing from functional via systems integration and onto pre-production testing of fixes/patches and updates, and involved the every kind of testing from “black box” to “glass box.”

The meta-analysis disclosed a 40% attempt waste in test activities, ranging from strategy to execution. This waste is attributed to”

1) Missing test coverage

3) Ambiguous and error-laden test scenarios, cases, and scripts

4) Duplication of test coverage and testing tasks

5) Test environment problems

6) Applying the incorrect approach to testing  

The 2014-2015 World Quality Report projected that by the year 2017, 29% of IT spends will be in the proposed testing.

Combine that with the very known 40% attempt waste during the time of testing, and it is possible to observe that approximately one-eighths of the entire healthcare IT spend will be lost on incomplete, insufficient, and error-prone testing/experiments.

 

Speakers to address primary problems for females in healthcare IT

Few of the most influential women in health information technology will be honored on the day of May 12 in Boston for their leadership in assisting the healthcare industry achieves the Triple Aim of improving care and patient outcomes while reducing costs.

The day-long event, entitled “Most Powerful Women in Healthcare IT” and hosted by Health Data Management, will recognize award winners in 3 categories—HIT Leader, Senior Executive and Industry Thought Leader/Influencer—for their achievements and innovation in solving organizational and technical issues by deploying technology and shaping the regulatory environment.

HDM’s event will also display an agenda of speakers and sessions to address the pressing problems confronting the industry, as well as provide an opportunity for professional development and networking with visionary leaders.

Keynote speaker Joan Reede, MD, dean for diversity and community partnership and an associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS), will discuss her attempts to promote the increased recruitment, retention and advancement of underrepresented minority, women, LGBT, and faculty with disabilities at HMS, in a talk entitled “Beyond the Numbers: What Should We Strive for with Inclusion Efforts?”

Additionally, keynote speaker Eileen Pollack, author of The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science is Still a Boys Club, will deal the social, interpersonal, and institutional barriers standing in the way of women—and minorities—in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields.

Dana Farber, Fitbit to research the affect of weight loss on breast cancer recurrence

Dana Farber Cancer Institute has partnered with Fitbit to begin a 2-year randomized study that will investigate the affect of weight loss on breast cancer recurrence. The study, called the Breast Cancer Weight Loss (BWEL) study, is sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology.

“The increased threat of cancer recurrence linked to excess body weight threatens to limit our progress in treating breast cancer and preventing women from dying from this disease,” Jennifer Ligibel, a breast oncologist at Dana-Farber and lead investigator of the BWEL trial, stated in a statement. “If this study indicates that losing weight through increasing physical activity and decreasing calories makes better the survival rates in breast cancer, this could lead to weight loss and physical activity becoming a standard part of the treatment for millions of breast cancer patients around the world.”

Hackers took a large healthcare provider's network entirely offline

MedStar Health was forced offline this week after hackers took over its computer systems. An unconfirmed virus reportedly strangled the network and rendered it fully useless. Due to the attack, the healthcare operator’s 30,000 staff members and 3,000 affiliated physicians cannot access online record systems, check their emails, or look up phone numbers. Patients also cannot book appointments.

A MedStar spokesperson has not still responded to a request for comment from The Verge, but the company told the AP that it could not confirm what kind of malware was affecting its system and said its systems were still offline yesterday. The healthcare provider, which operates 10 hospitals in Washington, DC and Maryland, also didn’t clarify how its systems came to be infected.

Healthcare provider-related digital health reports from Q1 2016

Apple once again made few major announcements this quarter that should be on healthcare providers' and medical researchers' radars. At a special event in the month of March, Apple announced the launch of its new CareKit platform, as well as some new features of Apple ResearchKit.

CareKit is an open source toolkit for hospitals and health systems. It will begin with two applications: one for home monitoring of Parkinson's and one for post-surgical discharge. The University of Rochester Medical Center, UCSF, Parkinson's Disease Care New York, Stanford Medicine, Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Emory Healthcare will all begin utilizing the CareKit Parkinson's app, while Texas Medical Center will pilot another app, a replacement for paper surgical discharge forms.

Apple also declared that ResearchKit would be updated to more easily make utilization of users' genetic data, through a module designed by consumer genetics company 23andMe. Apple added other modules for common medical tests to ResearchKit.

Apple announced 3 ResearchKit apps that will start incorporating genetic data, one new app and 2 existing ones. PPD Act, led by the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, will use genetic data to explore the question of why postpartum depression affects some women and not others. Stanford's MyHeartCounts app will incorporate data from 23andMe users who are already using the app, to help them to study genetic predisposition toward heart conditions and how they interrelate to lifestyle and activity factors. Mount Sinai's Asthma Health app, co-developed by LifeMap Solutions, will "use genetic data from 23andMe customers to help researchers better understand ways to personalize asthma treatment," according to Apple.

United Health Plans to Kick Out Obamacare Exchanges

U.S. health insurer UnitedHealth stated on the day of Tuesday that it would largely exit the Obamacare individual insurance market in the year 2017, citing expectations for mounting losses from the program.

UnitedHealth is the greatest U.S. health insurer and one of the biggest sellers of plans on the exchanges, which were made as part of President Barack Obama's national healthcare law. UnitedHealth sells these plans in 34 states this year, up from 25 states previous year.

"Next year, we will remain in only a handful of states," UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley said in prepared remarks as part of the company's first-quarter earnings report.

The company alerted the investors late last year that it was losing money on the new plans and might exit the market. On Tuesday, the company raised its 2016 expectation for losses on the exchanges by $125 million to $650 million.

Healthcare contributor-related digital health news from Q1 2016

Major players in Q1: Apple, Harvard and Stanford

Apple had once again made few major declarations this quarter that should be on healthcare contributors' and medical researchers' radars. At a particular occasion in the month of March, Apple declared the inauguration of its new CareKit platform, as well as few new characteristics of Apple ResearchKit.

CareKit is a proposed open source toolkit for the several hospitals and health systems. It will start with 2 applications: 1 for home checking of Parkinson's and other for the post-surgical discharge.

Apple also declared that ResearchKit would be upgraded to more easily make utilization of clients' genetic data, through a module designed by consumer Genetics Company 23andMe. Apple added other modules for usual medical expermients to ResearchKit.

Apple declared 3 ResearchKit apps that will start including the genetic data, one recent app and 2 existing ones. PPD Act, led by the University Of North Carolina School Of Medicine, will utilize genetic data to seek the query of why postpartum depression affects certain females and not others. Stanford's MyHeartCounts app will involve information from 23andMe users who are already utilizing the app, to assist them to research the genetic predisposition toward the heart cases and how they interrelate to lifestyle and activity proponents. Mount Sinai's Asthma Health app, co-developed by LifeMap Solutions, will "utilize genetic data from 23andMe clients to assist the researchers better comprehend ways to personalize asthma treatment," in accordance to Apple.

Another more ResearchKit app that was declared during the quarter was TeamStudy, a ResearchKit application began by Harvard University and Sage Bionetworks that targets to accumulate information from previous NFL players as well as the general public to study and better comprehend the impact playing football has on expert athletes.

Boston Children’s Hospital, which is also linked with the Harvard, started a 2^nd ResearchKit app this quarter known as Feverprints. Individuals all around the United States of America will be capable to download Feverprints and contribute information about their temperature (both when ill and when well), their medication utilization, any symptoms they may have, and demographic information. From the de-identified, aggregate information, Hawkins hopes to learn 3 things: what the range of "normal" temperature is, either various ailments have identifiable temperature profiles, and either fever-decreasing medications actually make better the recovery period or merely treat symptoms.

2 hospitals also declared patient-generated health information projects that utilized Apple HealthKit. In the month of January, Beth Israel Deaconess shared reports about BIDMC@Home, a step the hospital has been working on for the past 6 months or so. The concentration will be on congestive heart failure and disease of hypertension and the devices utilized will be linked weight scales, as a proxy for fluid balance, and blood pressure monitors. Additionally, Stanford issued a study proposed to demonstrate how a Dexcom CGM, HealthKit, and Epic can be utilized collectively to make better the glycemic control in the time of teens and kids with Type 1 diabetes. We also learned that Epic is working on an Apple Watch app for contributors.

Stanford had an influential quarter. In regard to the ResearchKit app and the CGM research, Stanford started an Android version of its Stanford Health Care MyHealth application, which permits sufferers to view their medical information, check test results, pay medical bills, handle prescriptions, schedule the all doctor appointments, and consult with a physician through protective messages or through the video visits characteristics.

The hospital also joined hand with UK-based mental health contributor Mersey Care NHS Trust has joined with Stanford University to establish an app to stop suicide. When a person decides to utilize it, the conceptualized application will check their communications, like social media accounts, emails, and phone calls, to assist the physicians to detect those at threat of committing suicide. If clients show thr symptoms of touring a location where persons mostly commit suicide or if they just miss out a significant appointment, the application would notify the proposed clinicians who could then call the client then.

After that in the quarter, Stanford released a research in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association explaining their experience setting up continual glucose checking with a Dexcom G4 CGM, Apple HealthKit, and Epic. In spite of few technical complications, the technology was highly effective and convenient to utilize.

Boston Children’s also had a great quarter. In regard to the Feverprints research, BCH revamped its Innovation Accelerator program into a latest accelerator known as IDHA which compels on the work of about fifty hospital workers and hinted at a partnership in the works with the institute of Amazon to “embed Children’s Hospital know-how” in the Amazon Echo, the Bluetooth speaker of company that doubles as a voice control central hub for linked home devices and facilities.

Errant clicks on phishing email led to violation, hospital exec claims

Even healthcare agencies that make a conscientious attempt to comply with HIPAA and continually making better their data security posture can find themselves victimized by cyber attacks.

That lesson was learned the hard way by Wyoming Medical Center, which recently reported a breach that occurred in late February. The Casper-based organization said identities of nearly 3,200 sufferers were briefly vulnerable after an email phishing attack that tricked 2 employees into divulging network credentials.

The agency had companywide training previous year, involving sessions on how to ignore phishing attacks, says Matt Fredericksen, chief compliance and privacy officer.

Additionally, Wyoming Medical regularly conducts email educational blasts on phishing and launched mock phishing attacks on workers 4 times between last August and February. Those who failed the mock phishing attacks by clicking on specious links instantly were taken to a training page for re-education. Those attempts were working, and the failure rate during mock phishing attacks was falling, Fredricksen claims.

But it only takes 1 worker or 2 in Wyoming Medical’s case, to fail to spot a phishing attack before an agency finds itself on the government’s Wall of Shame list of major breaches.

Brigham and Women's Health Care selects the Landman CIO

Dr. Adam Landman was named CIO of Brigham and Women's Health Care in Boston, effective on the day of May 2. He replaces Dr. Cedric Priebe, who appointed as CIO from the month of January 2014 to September 2015.

Landman presently serves as Brigham's chief medical information officer for health information innovation and integration, a job that has him overseeing implementation of Epic Systems Corp. information technology systems. He is also an emergency department physician at the 793-bed teaching hospital.

A graduate of Yale University, Landman is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation clinical scholar and board-certified in emergency medicine and clinical informatics.

An affiliate of Harvard Medical School, Brigham serves more than 4.2 million sufferers yearly and employs nearly 16,000 people.

Health Care Employees Could Utilize More Sleep

A new survey on workers’ sleeping habits involves some startling results for the health care sector. Among the findings in the survey, which was done by CareerBuilder, were that 65% of health care workers say a shortage of sleep has impacted their work, and 26% say they get 5 hours of sleep or less on average. Their work atmosphere is feeding into the lack of sleep, with 53% of respondents saying that considering about work keeps them up at night, and 68% having had work-related dreams. 49 percent say they have found someone sleeping at work.

Clinician shortage at community health centers

One of the pillars of the health care safety net — the community health center — is threatened by a deficiency of primary care providers at a time when CHCs are serving more persons than ever. A report from the National Association of Community Health Centers indicates that CHCs have a higher physician vacancy rate (21 percent) than hospitals do (18 percent). The report, “Staffing the Safety Net: Building the Primary Care Workforce at America’s Health Centers,” indicates that 95% of CHCs have a clinical vacancy of any kind, with family physicians (69 percent), nurse practitioners (50 percent) and medical assistants (48 percent) being needed the most.

New program integrates nursing and social work

The University of Southern California School of Social Work started accepting applications for an online master of science in nursing degree for family nurse practitioners. The new degree is designed to educate students on the biological, behavioral and social factors that influence health and well-being. "Evidence recommends 80 percent of health is influenced by social, psychological, environmental and behavioral factors, stated Ellen Olshansky, newly appointed chair of the department of nursing at USC School of Social Work, in a news release. “We consider combining nursing and social work will prepare a new type of nurse who can effectively integrate this knowledge into practice," Olshansky stated.

United States Virtual Healthcare Market 2016 – Primary Players are Teladoc, Doctor on Demand and HealthTap

Research and Markets has declared the addition of the "United States Virtual Healthcare Market 2016" report to their offering.

The United States virtual healthcare market has been acquiring tremendous traction in recent years. Various companies operating in the U.S. virtual healthcare market have witnessed massive growth since the year 2014. Furthermore, the market has witnessed the entry of various new companies with disruptive technologies and business models.

This study targets to provide a detailed analysis of the U.S. virtual healthcare market along with competitive intelligence for 2015.

The market numbers involved in this report represent revenues generated by companies operating in the U.S. virtual healthcare market by mode of consultation (online visits to physicians through several modes of communication like audio, video and kiosks). The base year for the study is 2015 and the forecast period is from the years 2015 until 2022.

Verizon reducing the healthcare benefits for 36,000 striking employees April 30

Verizon employees striking across the Northeast, involving right here in Central New York, will lose their healthcare coverage April 30.

The 36,000 workers went on strike 2 weeks ago over various complaints that involve moving jobs, like customer call centers, overseas, hiring non-union contractors for jobs and placing technicians out-of-state to work for months at a time.

Verizon will end healthcare benefits at the end of the month April.

After that, the CWA will pay for any essential medical or hospital expenditures or in few cases employees can seek coverage under COBRA.

“The point of the strike is that the persons who work here stand to lose their work to the state India and the Philippines,” states local 1123 President Chris Ryan. “It is un-American.”

BCBS of Arizona, McKesson Inaugurate ACO Partner — Four main highlights

In the collaboration and cooperation with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, McKesson is inaugurating ACO Partner, in accordance to HIT Consultant.

Here are 4 main highlights:

1. Through the ACO Partners, McKesson targets to increase the care management, population health services, physician engagement, and technology.


2. To make better the quality of care and decrease costs, ACO Partner has policies to contract with contributor groups and payers throughout the United States of America.


3. BCBS of Arizona is the 1^st insurance company to have a contract with ACO Partner, and facilitates as a main or primary investor in the ACO via the payer's subsidiary, Trinnovate Ventures.


4. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona and McKesson contributed a lot to develop an infrastructure that will motivate the strategic collaboration between the contributors and physicians. The complex and infrastructure will also work to serve the continual patient engagement.

 

The country's greatest health-insurance company is almost completely quitting Obamacare

The country's greatest healthcare company is getting out of the Obamacare business.

United Healthcare, which presently covers the most Americans in the US (pending the proposed Anthem-Cigna merger), stated that in its quarterly earnings release on the day of Tuesday that it is removing its offerings from almost all Affordable Care Act exchanges by the year 2017.

"The smaller overall market size and shorter-term higher risk profile within this market segment sustain to suggest we can’t broadly serve it on an effective and sustained basis," claimed CEO Stephen Hemsley in the company's quarterly earnings conference call.

Lady who ran Obamacare cautions of BIG insurance costs hikes

Marilyn Tavenner's crystal ball did not foresee the initial epic flop of HealthCare.gov when she actually ran the agency in charge of the website. Now, as an insurance lobbyist, she observes big jumps in Obamacare insurance premiums next year.

"I have been asked, what are the premiums going to look like? I do not know, because it also varies by state, market, or even within markets," Tavenner told the MorningConsult.com in an interview.

"But I consider the overall trend is going to be greater than we saw in previous years. That is my big prediction," stated Tavenner, who is now president and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's lobbying group.

Tavenner's warning of sharp hikes in insurance costs comes as insurers prepare to propose their 2017 Obamacare plan rates, and as the major insurer UnitedHealth has revealed it is exiting most Obamacare marketplaces where it has sold policies.

Nation's greatest carrier of subsidized health insurance as part of the ACA finishes business in Iowa

The nation's greatest healthcare contributor says it no longer is offering coverage in Iowa under the President's Affordable Health Care Act.

It is news that may be making few confusion for persons signed up for Iowa's new Medicaid system.

In Iowa, the company also offers coverage as part of the state's new Medicaid program.  But that coverage is not impacted by the companies’ departure from Obamacare.

If you are one of about 9,000 Iowans who bought health insurance with UnitedHealthcare through the marketplace, there is no need to worry.  The coverage is good through the end of the year.  A new option should be present when it is time to re-enroll this fall.

UnitedHealthcare says it is lost millions while being part of the Obamacare marketplace.  The company has ended coverage in various other states as well.

About 560,000 Iowan's are enrolled in Medicaid plans offered by 3 companies in Iowa involving UnitedHealthcre.

Why the cybercriminals attack the healthcare sector more than any other industry

Cybercriminals attacked the healthcare industry at a greater amount than any other sector in the year 2015, and more than 100 million healthcare records were compromised previous year, in accordance to a new report published by IBM.

In fact, the year 2015 was “the year of the healthcare breach,” IBM stated in its 2016 Cyber Security Intelligence Index.

The rate of attacks against the healthcare sector climbed to the largest level of all industries studied in the year 2015, after not making the top five in the year 2014, as healthcare leaped ahead of the manufacturing, financial services, government and transportation industries.

Data breaches in the healthcare sector are also getting greater – with five of the eight largest health data breaches reported since the year 2010 (those with more than 1 million records compromised) occurring in the first 6 months of the year 2015, IBM’s report said.

And the cost of data breaches is going up, specifically in healthcare, in accordance IBM’s 2015 Cost of a Data Breach study.

'Junior doctors are struggling for a dying NHS': healthcare workers speak out

They are fighting for a dying NHS and affordable working conditions’

What will you be doing on strike day? I’ll be the sole doctor covering the department (usually 8 doctors).

How do you feel about junior doctors staging a full walkout? They are fighting for a dying NHS and reasonable working conditions. This is the culmination of years of abuse. My take home salary is 10 percent lower than it was in the year 2004 but I have moved from being a senior house officer to a consultant. My contracted hours are exactly the same. Juniors today are so poorly paid they cannot expect to pay off their medical school debts for many years and purchasing a home is utter fantasy in the city of London.

‘I do not support any strike by frontline health staff’

What will you be doing on strike day? We are already ready for making sure our services are covered by senior clinicians on both days. We will be developing how many doctors attend on each day and informing NHS England.

IT in new risk-based primary care model of CMS: Seven things Must to know

Initially this month CMS declared a new primary care initiative that seeks to assist the practices transition to primary care. Called the Comprehensive Primary Care Plus model, the initiative concentrates on 5 function regions to assist the primary care practices to better communicate with other contributors in the care continuum. CPC+ also places a great emphasis on leveraging health IT to meet these objectives.

Here are the 7 things to know about health information technology in CMS' CPC+ model.

1. The proposed participating practices will be in one of 2 tracks. In both the tracks, practices gain upfront incentive payments that they’ll either keep or repay deployed on performance and quality metrics.


2. Practices in both tracks are needed to utilize the certified health IT to permit remote approach to the EHR, permit 24/7 access to the EHR for the care group members with real-time access, report on electronic clinical quality steps and generate quality reports.


3. Although, there is a greater emphasis in Track Two on leveraging the health IT to acquire healthcare delivery changes. "The care delivery CMS hoped in Track 2 is reliant upon the utilization of advanced health IT abilities that practices will require to attain through EHR enhancements/modifications or by adding or protecting the extra health IT services/tools," in accordance to CMS. "Thus practices will involve their vendors to motivate the attainment and optimization of health IT to meet the targets and goals of practice transformation."


4. The IT needs pertaining particularly to Track 2 involve adopting IT certified to "Care Plan" and "Social, Behavioral and Psychological Data" criteria as recognized in the certified EHR technology definitions in the Medicare EHR Incentive program.


5. Track 2 participants will be hoped to leverage the health IT abilities that aren’t always available in present platforms or aren’t needed for ONC certification. Few of these abilities involve risk-stratifying sufferer populations and recognizing patients with complex requirements; producing and displaying eCQM outcomes at the practice level; assessing patient's psychosocial requirements; developing a patient-focused care plan to instruct the care management; and documenting and detecting patient-reported results.

As such, practices in this track will work with vendors to establish and optimize functions to reinforce clinical targets. "CMS won’t prescribe how the health IT enhancement is accomplished, instead just that the health IT solution meets the CPC target for utilization of the health IT by the CPC practice site team," in accordance to CMS.

6. Moreover, vendors of Track 2 participants will offer a "Letter of Support" to the CPC+ practice showing they’re willing to support the practice in the initiative if the practice is chosen for participation. If the practice is chosen for participation, the vendor will step into a memorandum of understanding with CMS outlining their devotion to support the practices in reaching the targets of the initiative. CMS won’t pay vendors for their participation in CPC+.


7. Entire health IT enhancements are hoped to be completed within 24 months of the January 2017 program beginning.

 

NIST Poised To Issue Cyber Security Guidelines To Assist the Hospitals

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is poised to issue new best practices guidelines for cybersecurity to assist the hospitals cope with threats, in accordance to Ronald Ross, NIST fellow, SecureWorld reported.

NIST currently gives a cybersecurity framework established for the federal government to help understand, select, and then implement security controls. Ross compared the framework to a massive catalog of privacy and security controls that can assist to safeguard an agency from hostile cyber attacks.

The forthcoming guidance will seek to assist the healthcare organizations address security even while specific things remain outside of their control, like operating systems or data bases. Ross told Healthcare IT, “The great way to describe the concept is like this: when you fly on an airplane or cross a bridge, you do so because you trust the airplanes we fly and the bridges we cross, you have confidence in the persons who designed and constructed them.” The guidance thus also will give best practices for building software and systems that are secure and trustworthy.

Healthcare In Top Spot For Various Data Violations

Healthcare saw the largest volume of data violations in 2015but, while malicious actors still hold an advantage, progress is being made according to IBM X-Force’s 2016 Cyber Security Intelligence Index. The yearly report reviews events of 2015 based on IBM Security Services’ operational and investigative data of billions of security events across more than 1,000 industries in 100 countries to give an interesting snapshot into the security “arms race” between adversaries and defenders.

The fact healthcare was thrust into the top spot for 2015 should be no surprise, offered IBM dubbed 2015 “The Year of the Healthcare Breach.”The 2016 IBM X-Force Cyber Security Intelligence Index offers a high-level overview of the huge threats to IBM client worldwide over the last year, giving a detailed look at the volume of attacks, the industries most affected, the most prevalent kinds of attacks and attackers, and the primary factors enabling them. Among the highlights of the report:

• Retail Drops Out Of Top 5; Industry Targets Shift
  Healthcare shifted into 1^st place as the most-attacked industry in the year 2015, followed by manufacturing, financial services, government, and transportation. Five of the eight greatest healthcare security breaches since the year 2010 occurred during the first six months of the year 2015, and over 100 million healthcare records were compromised in the year 2015.


• Extortion On The Rise
  The various breaches in the financial services industry that included extortion tactics or theft of currency rose by 80% in 2015, but ransomware is not limited to attacks on financial institutions as the recent attacks on Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital and others demonstrate.


• Analytics Significantly Decreased False Positives
  Better tools, tuning, and analytics are improving signal-to-noise ratio and sharpening focus. The mass of security events an average organization has to deal with dropped 35% from 81 million to 53 million yearly. At the similar time, our average client company experienced 1,157 attacks in the year 2015, down 90% from 12,017 the year before.


• Security Incidents Increased 64 Percent
  There were 178 security tragedies (the most serious of the three, requiring deeper investigation) in 2015, up 66% from 109 in the year 2014.


• Insiders Are Still A Big Problem
  60% (up from 55 percent) of attacks were initiated by insiders, of those 33% were carried out by inadvertent actors (down from 50 percent in 2014) A sign of change in worker education and security policies.

Health care industry hands slander alert to state Senate candidate

One of the more politically active health care outlets in the state of Georgia has delivered a cease-and-desist alert to Aaron Barlow, the GOP challenger to state Sen. Brandon Beach, R-Alpharetta.

In a letter, Randy Evans, the attorney for Jackson Healthcare of Alpharetta warned Barlow that he was dallying with a slander suit for alleging that Jackson Healthcare and its CEO, Richard Jackson, were the mere entity behind Senate Bill 86, a measure sponsored by Beach and other Republicans that would have highly curtailed malpractice lawsuits.

The bill was launched in the month of February 2015, and never moved.

The comments in query were made previous week at the Cherokee County Republican Women’s debate. You can find the exchange on this YouTube video around the 50-minute mark. Beach pointed to SB 86 as part of his fight to curtail the influence of trial lawyers and repair the alleged damage done by the federal Affordable Care Act.

The 2^ndsigner on the bill is state Sen. John Albers, R- Roswell, considered one of the most conservative members of the state Senate.

Healthcare ETFs Confront Election Year Blues

Thanks to a latest rally, the Health Care SPDR (ETF) XLV 0.54% and comparable healthcare exchange-traded funds have nudged larger on a year-to-date basis. Compared to how it looked a few weeks ago, XLV's 0.1% year-to-date gains seems decent.

Relative to how XLV performed over the past few years, the ETF is yet in a funk. A combination of factors is weighing on the healthcare sector, the 3^rd greatest sector weight in the S&P 500 this year. Among those factors are slumping biotechnology stocks. For instance, the iShares NASDAQ Biotechnology Index (ETF) IBB 1.02%, the greatest biotechnology ETF, even with the help of a recent surge is off 14.7 percent this year.

Healthcare execs confident on technology, bullish on finance

Hospital executives are backing technology and hope the healthcare industry will sustain to depend on healthcare IT going forward, in accordance to a new survey.

The execs are also optimistic about hospital finances, in accordance to the 2016 Middle Market Healthcare Outlook, issued today by CIT Group, a financial services firm.

"Technology is obviously seen as having a crucial – and beneficial – role within the healthcare industry," CIT Group concludes. At least eight in 10 executives consider customers should be – and are – utilizing technology to make better the quality and cost.

Healthcare executives demonstrated a positive outlook for the year 2016, with 71% hoping their revenues to increase this year and 55% planning to seek financing in the next 12 months.

"The majority of the surveyed healthcare executives remain optimistic, expecting similar growth to previous year in revenue, costs, volume and capital spending," stated William Douglass, group head and managing director, CIT Healthcare Finance.

NYP punished with $2.2M fine for HIPAA breach in filming TV series

New York-Presbyterian Hospital has been punished with $2.2 million under sanctions given by the HHS Office for Civil Rights and has stepped into a corrective action policy for unauthorized filming of 2 sufferers while engaging in the “NY Med” television series.

It was the 2^nd HIPAA violation for the New York-Presbyterian Hospital (NYP), which 2 years ago paid $3.3 million and Columbia University paid $1.5 million following a 2010 violation in which protected health data on a shared data network was discovered to be approachable on Google and other various Internet search engines.

The HHS Office for Civil Rights claimed the greatest violation was an outcome of errors in NYP’s judgment in permitting filming of the TV series.

 “In specific, OCR discovered that NYP permitted the ABC crew to film someone who was dying and another person in important distress, even after a medical expert emphasized the crew to stop,” an agency stated.

Overall, OCR discovered that NYP offered the network “virtually unfettered approach to its healthcare facility,” which made an atmosphere where PHI could not be secured. “This case sends a significant message that OCR won’t allow covered entities to compromise their sufferers’ privacy by permitting news or TV crews to film the sufferers without their authorization,” OCR Director Jocelyn Samuels claimed in the announcement.

Under a proposed resolution agreement with OCR, the hospital has stepped into a two-year corrective action policy that involves establishing the new policies and processes to make sure that photography, video or audio recordings—for purposes not regarded to the provision of medical care—can just be done with authorization from a sufferer or the patient’s personal representative.

A range of other compulsory policies and processes will govern various problem regarded to such recordings. Particular workforce HIPAA privacy training policies also are spelled out.

NYP released the following statement on the regulatory sanctions:

“New York-Presbyterian reached agreement with the Office for Civil Rights in case to bring closure to OCR’s review procedure.

“Our involvement in the ABC News documentary program “NY Med” was proposed to educate the public and give insight into the complications of medical care and the regular challenges confronted by our dedicated and compassionate medical professionals. This program, and others that preceded it, garnered much acclaim, and raised the public’s consciousness of significant public health problems, involving organ transplantation and donation. It also vividly expressed how our emergency department medical team operates tirelessly each day to save sufferers’ lives. The hospital sustains to maintain that the filming of this documentary program didn’t violate the HIPAA Privacy Rule.”

 

CMS utilizes data to manage disparities in care

The Medicare Advantage managed care program suffers from racial and ethnic disparities in care, the CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) appreciates in a newly released report.

In accordance to the report, African Americans and Hispanic beneficiaries had significantly more difficulty getting required care and making medical appointments than Whites, and African Americans had a tougher time getting prescriptions than Whites.

“While these information do not tell us why differences exist, they show where we have issues and can help spur efforts to understand what can be done to reduce or eliminate differences,” Cara James, PhD, director of the CMS Office of Minority Health, said in a statement.

The data comes from the Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set of medical and administrative data on how well the requirements of Medicare beneficiaries are being met, as well as the Medicare Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems.

Cyberattacks grow against manufacturing, healthcare companies

A new report that inquires the shifting direction of cyberattacks noted attackers turning their attention away from the financial services sector, in favor of attacks against manufacturing and healthcare agencies.

The IBM X-Force Cyber Security Intelligence Index report gives insights into cyberattacks targeting private sector companies. The study monitored 8,000 clients during a 12-month time, from the month of January until the end of December 2015.

The study discovered that healthcare companies got the most cyberattacks of any other industry during the year 2015, confirming recent reports of an increase in new strains of ransomware, and many other vulnerabilities that threaten the healthcare sector.

Healthcare BI Platform Market to Increase Because of Rising Demand for Technologically Advanced Healthcare Networks

A business intelligence platform is utilized by healthcare organizations to make helpful healthcare applications that help them in ensuring the provision of quality healthcare to sufferers. BI platforms help control healthcare costs and offer various benefits to healthcare organizations like analysis capability, providing information on delivery, and integration.

Healthcare BI platforms give a very useful function called financial analytics. The availability of the financial analytics function is acting as a major progress driver for the healthcare BI platform market. An increasing number of conventional healthcare systems are being replaced by BI platforms as the latter are technologically advanced, thus driving the market for healthcare BI platforms.

Healthcare BI Platform Market to Expand because of Growing Demand for Reduced Healthcare Expenditure

Government regulations like the Affordable Care Act in the U.S. in 2010 are also promoting the adoption of healthcare BI platform, leading to the market’s growth. The capability of BI platforms to offer quality healthcare to patients at a reduced cost is compelling the market’s growth. Increasing prevalence of health issues and the consequent rise in the healthcare expenditure have led to a increasing demand for advanced healthcare systems. BI platforms are thus the requirement of the hour in terms of providing technologically advanced healthcare facilities at reduced prices.

Financial Analytics Segment to Lead Healthcare BI Platform Market

The global healthcare BI platform market is segmented on the basis of function, deployment type, model and geography. On the basis of model kind, the healthcare BI platform is segmented into corporate BI and self-service BI. Of these 2 sub-segments, the segment dominating the healthcare BI platform market is the corporate BI model. Although, the self-service BI model is hoped to be the fastest growing segment during the time of 2015 to 2023 owing to the high demand for faster and diverse analytics by making utilization of decentralized data.

The stock of Concordia Healthcare soars on buyout report

Shares of Concordia Healthcare surged on the day of Thursday after Bloomberg reported that Blackstone Group was considering about acquiring the Canada-based firm.

The stock was up 25.05% before being halted for news pending.

Concordia later stated in a release it had formed a "special committee to review strategic alternatives." Such special committees are often, but not always, seen as a symptom that a company is up for sale.

Bloomberg stated, citing people close to the matter, that talks between the 2 companies were at an early stage, adding that a deal may not happen.

Concordia's stock has fallen nearly 60% in the past year, and more than 25%  in 2016.

Healthcare workers, how do you feel about an all-out junior doctors' protest?

Junior doctors are to go on a2-day, all-out protest, in which even emergency cover will be withdrawn.

In a dramatic escalation of their strike against the latest contract that the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, policies to impose, junior doctors in England will stage the first all-out strikes on 26 and 27 April.

Unlike the 4 walkouts they have held since the month of January, they will not report for duty even in medical settings that offer critical care, like A&E, emergency surgery and maternity.

Prof Sir Bruce Keogh, the national medical director of NHS England, has labeled the action reckless, unethical, a breach of the medical profession’s fundamental duty to “do no harm” and a shift that will destroy the public’s trust in doctors.

The British Medical Association reassured patients that care will be safe on protest days because consultants will undertake junior colleagues’ roles.

Healthcare Information Breaches Reveal 23,000 Patients' Personal Data

Recent information breaches impacting Florida's Palm Beach County Health Department, Wisconsin's Oneida Health Center and Arkansas' Pain Treatment Centers of America (PTCOA) and Interventional Surgery Institute (ISI) have revealed more than 23,000 patients' personal data.

In accordance to PTCOA and ISI, the personal information of 19,397 of their sufferers was exposed when data servers belonging to 3^rd-party vendor Bizmatics were hacked. Bizmatics owns and functions the EHR and practice management tool PrognoCIS, which is utilized by PTCOA and ISI, among others.

Because PrognoCIS stores and arranges sufferer files, the hacker may have approached patient names, addresses, health insurance data, health visit data, license numbers of driver and, in few cases, Social Security numbers.

"Bizmatics has discussed with law implementation and has employed an independent cyber forensics firm to inquire and assure the intrusion is contained and the affected networks are better protected," PTCOA and ISI CEO Bill McCrary wrote in the notification letter. "We have noticed that Bizmatics became aware of the tragedy in the late 2015, but neither Bizmatics, law implementation, nor the cyber forensics firm is capable to notice the accurate date on which the attack started."

All those affected are being offered a free one-year membership in Experian's ProtectMyID Alert service.

The Oneida Health Center in Wisconsin recently declared that on the day of February 17, 2016, a flash drive consisting of patient data was stolen from its dental offices. The drive arranged 2,734 patients' names, dates of visits, dental patient identification numbers, and dental insurance identification numbers.

However the theft was found on the similar day and police were instantly notified, the drive has not been recovered.

"To stop a reoccurrence of this kind of isolated internal tragedy, we are applying the following steps: reviewing and implementing administrative processes regarding the utilization of flash drives and implementing suitable technological safeguards regarding to their security and storage," the center stated in a statement.

And the Florida Department of Health recently declared that federal law enforcement authorities had gained a list of 1,076 Palm Beach County Health Department patients' names, Social Security numbers, birthdates, phone numbers, Medicaid numbers, and medical record numbers.

"The feds acquired this list," department spokesman Tim O'Connor informed the Modern Healthcare. "We do not know how."

"The Department of Health takes its duty of protecting the client's personal data very critically. And is keenly know that how significant this data is to everyone and is completely committed to protecting all confidential data," the department stated in a statement. "The department trains staff on the significance of securing protected health data by needing annual HIPAA and Privacy and Information Security training to all workers."

 

ECRI ranks health IT among the top safety uncertainties of industry

While information technology has vast potential to make better the patient results, the ECRI Institute has ranked a health IT-related issue as the top 2016 patient safety concern facing healthcare agencies.

Heading ECRI’s list of this year’s top 10 patient safety worries is “health IT configurations and organizational workflow that don’t support each other.” As ECRI’s report points out, when HIT configuration and workflow clash, communication suffers and can lead to delays in care or even medical mistakes.

That was not the only patient safety concern with a health IT connection, claims Bill Marella, executive director of patient safety reporting systems at ECRI.

“There are a number of topics on the Top 10 list this year that relate to IT, which is a function of the massive investment we have made in electronic health records and other systems,” Marella claims. “The task for us is to optimize them and make certain that they support clinicians rather than detract from their workflow and create more work for them to do.”

Is the Ramsay Health Care top recession-proof stock of state?

The broker pitch goes something like this: "People will not stop getting sick in a downturn and operating earnings have risen for 20 consecutive years. Ramsay Health Care is recession proof. That, Mr Jones, is why you should BUY."

On the face of it, that discussion makes sense. Ramsay Health Care is a phenomenal business and now accounts for 26% of the private hospital industry.

The sheer size of the business offers it extra leverage to squeeze out cost advantages when buying medical consumables such as bandages and syringes, and the company has significant discussion power with private health insurers.

Ramsay's global expansion has also been well managed, which has decreased its reliance on Australian revenues, and the company is set to benefit from an ageing population more than almost any other.

The odd elective surgery may be postponed but, for the most part, Ramsay really is recession proof.

Sadly, this is the point where the broker's argument falls apart; recession-proof businesses aren’t the same as recession-proof investments.

HEALTH CARE SYSTEM EXTENDS TO COVER UNDOCUMENTED KIDS

Starting next month, almost 200,000 kids of undocumented workers will now have approach to health care.

Changes to California's health care system will now expand coverage to undocumented kids, ages 18 and younger, who don’t have medical insurance.

The changes go into effect on May 16, and it is a relief to some parents.

"Thank God that we have it," claims Jose Hernandez, who was capable to enroll his kids into the program because they were born in the U.S.

Hernandez claims the program saved his son's life when he had his appendix removed.

"Painful," the boy claims. "But I am happy I had the coverage."

Yet others say they can’t say the same. Their kids are not covered by California's health system, and the Affordable Care Act also excludes them from getting coverage.

Jackson Health reports record profit, better patient protection in the year 2015

Sufferers are getting fewer infections and suffering fewer wounds, though some snags remain, while the hiring of extra medical staff, technological upgrades and extensive renovations have started  to pursue more insured sufferers to Jackson Health System, in accordance to reports presented on the day of Wednesday to the Public Health Trust that governs Miami-Dade's $1.8 billion-a-year public hospital network.

The combined improvements, Jackson Health administrators said, assisted the public hospital system post an audited budget surplus of $64 million for the year that ended Sept. 30, 2015.

“That is the greatest bottom line that Jackson has had in the published history that we can identify,” stated Mark Knight, chief financial officer.

Five Reasons Cybercriminals Aims Healthcare

Cybercriminals are growingly aiming healthcare institutions and victoriously deploying malware and ransomware to exploit hospitals' requirement to recover rapidly.

Here is a look at the significant reasons cybercriminals are aiming at healthcare institutions.

1. 
   

   Healthcare is historically not very protective

   
   

In the year 2009, Congress approved the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act that needed hospitals to turn from paper to electronic health records (EHRs). With this came a flood of new health information technology and concerns that some of these vendors were bypassing security measures in order to get their products to market rapidly, leaving the already newly digital healthcare institutions open and susceptible to cyberattacks.

2. 
   

   It is life or death.

   
   

Because lives are at stake, healthcare experts and their sufferers often cannot afford to have systems down or wait for an incident response team to come in and clean up the mess. This makes them important targets for ransomware attacks. They often pay the ransom in case to get their systems back up and running.

3. 
   

   The data is lucrative.

   
   

In addition to being ripe for the ransomware-picking because of the need for fast recovery times, hospitals also house a lot of private data. When cybercriminals steal a sufferer’s healthcare records, they are often capable to acquire various pieces of information: social security number, medical history, insurance contributor, the patient's medications, and so on. There is a larger concentration of sensitive information.

4. 
   

   An application-heavy environment offers a broad attack landscape.

   
   

In accordance to the Duo Labs report, Duo Security healthcare clients are logging into twice as various applications as the average user in other industries. This in itself is not a security risk or issue, but more diverse systems ... [may] need them to utilize old systems which could put them at threat of attack.

5. 
   

   They have an affinity for Windows and out-of-date browsing.

   
   

The healthcare industry is yet using out-of-date, legacy systems. The report found that 82 percent of healthcare agencies are using Windows, and 76 percent are running on Windows 7

Increasing rate of endpoints raises healthcare susceptibility

The threat of criminal approach to networks and cyber attacks is increasing due to endpoint vulnerabilities, in accordance to results of a latest survey by the Ponemon Institute.

The survey, performed by Ponemon on behalf of CounterTack, has important implications for healthcare agencies, which have seen raised the access to networks and data through the utilization of many types of devices, like laptops and smartphones.

The logic that more devices are in utilization to access an agency’s network—often in the hands of unsophisticated consumers who may be careless with security practices—increases the number of ways that networks can be hacked.

The Ponemon research, which observed at data system security across various industries, disclosed that protection of endpoint tools has not kept up with threats that confront them. “With all the data we have collected, there appears to be a stalemate,” claims Larry Ponemon, founder of security research firm Ponemon Institute. “Companies are doing a lot more, but cannot keep up with the crooks.”

The healthcare industry is a high-profile aim due to the value of the information that contributors and payers hold.

Endpoint security is an increasing concern across companies. Endpoint devices can involve servers, desktop and laptop computers, printers, smartphones, point-of-service devices and more, and they communicate information with an agency’s data network. “The endpoint is the doorway to enterprise networks,” Ponemon elaborates. “Attack vectors converge on connected devices, and then infiltrate the network.”

Specifically in healthcare, with the increased utilization of mobile devices, not sufficient attention has been paid to how to assess either a device is secure, but several industries are not making a more secure atmosphere. “If you have 100 connected devices, it is difficult to determine which one is the aim,” Ponemonll claims. While there are many tools and devices to make endpoint security improved, the truth is that various agencies sustain in a status quo setting and aren’t being proactive.”

Negligent workers and the devices they utilize in the workplace sustain to be the greatest source of endpoint risk, the Ponemon survey discovered. Some 81% of respondents claimed the greatest challenge is minimizing the issue of negligent or careless workers who don’t follow security policies. The risk caused by the increasing number of insecure mobile tools in the workplace increased to 50% from 33% in the year 2013, respondents claimed.

Further 60% of respondents stated that it has become harder to handle endpoint risk, and 80% of respondents consider their mobile endpoints have been the aim of malware over the last 12 months, up from 68% only 2 years ago. Laptops and smartphones pose the greatest endpoint risk, in accordance to 43% and 30% of respondents, respectively. Respondents assume that an average of one-third of all endpoints linked to their agency’s network is not protected

Ransomware has become a major issue because not merely can a healthcare agency or another company be hit once, but ransomware can make lateral movements in an agency—stamp it out in 1 part and it indicates up in another.

That is why endpoint security has become so significant, in accordance to Ponemon. Many agencies in healthcare and other parts have followed a Fort Knox strategy of constructing powerful perimeter defenses. But even the greatest firewalls cannot recognize every piece of malware, and the idea of information has changed, he further adds. “It is all over the place and unstructured, like email.”

Healthcare agencies haven’t been at the leading edge of network security, in part because they mostly do not have the resources or consider that criminals were aiming other sectors, like banking and finance, Ponemon states. But other sectors have complicated their network defenses, and healthcare’s security seems soft by comparison, specifically considering the rate of business associates included in care, which might not be as security-conscious as they should be.

Ponemon suggests taking a good glance at cloud computing vendors, as they have entered up with very secure atmospheres, making it possible for even the smallest contributors to have correct protection. Furthermore, recent steps to share threat information and integrate threat intelligence into security policies will make better the overall protection, he further adds. “Many contributors did not consider they had the right persons to assess the data, so they did not essentially make better the security.”

 

The Famous Home healthcare industries pamper new moms

Gone are the days when grandmothers could come to the rescue of new moms grappling with baby care. Home healthcare contributors such as Portea Medical, India Home Healthcare, Zoctr and mainstream players such as Apollo are finding takers in new age moms who are on the lookout for experts who have practical experience, medical knowledge and hands-on training to assist them with their babies.
"In today's fast-paced world, females have multiple requirements to balance and there is an increasing demands for mother and baby care services from a professional," stated Dr Mahesh Joshi, CEO, Apollo Home Healthcare.
Nurses are trained in all respects regarded to baby and mothercare, right from umbilical cord care, breastfeeding, holding the baby in the right position, massaging the baby, managing the diet of the baby and detecting illnesses. While they typically support both the mothers and the baby in the 1^st few weeks/months after delivery, they also get appeals for these services for babies who are five to ten months old.

Five of the 8 greatest healthcare cybersecurity breaches since 2010 occurred in the year 2015

Five of the 8 greatest healthcare security breaches that occurred since the start of 2010 – those with more than 1 million records reportedly compromised – took place during the first six months of the year 2015, in accordance to IBM X-Force’s “2016 Cyber Security Intelligence Index.” And in the year 2015 overall, more than 100 million healthcare records reportedly were compromised, the report claimed.

The report recommended 4 key steps to help develop a strategic cybersecurity program, which involve: prioritize business objectives and set risk tolerance, institute a proactive security plan, craft a response to the inevitable sophisticated attack, and then promote and support a culture of security awareness.

The recommendations are specifically significant to healthcare organizations, which are now the top industry targeted by cybercriminals, in accordance to the annual IBM X-Force report, and various other recent reports.

The top 5 industries in the year 2015 for cyberattacks: healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, government and transportation, the IBM X-Force report found. The top 5 in the year 2014: financial services, information/communication, manufacturing, retail and energy/utilities, the report claimed.

Healthcare Integration Market - Global Forecast to the year 2021

Healthcare Integration Market - Global Forecast to the year 2021 - Main Players are Orion Health, Quality Systems & Epic Systems Corporations

Research and Markets has declared the addition of the "Healthcare Integration Market - Global Forecast to 2021" report to their offering.

The global healthcare integration market is assumed to reach USD 3.73 Billion by the year 2021, growing at a CAGR of 10.2 percent during the forecast period of 2016 to 2021.

The development in this market is majorly driven by the rising healthcare costs, powerful government support and initiatives to curtail rising healthcare prices, the growing requirement to integrate healthcare systems, and attempts from healthcare contributors to maximize their returns on investment. Although, various interoperability problems, a fragmented end-users market, and the high cost of implementation yet remain some of the challenges for greater adoption of integration tools within the healthcare industry, thus restraining the healthcare integration market growth.

The global healthcare integration market is segmented deployed on solutions, applications, and regions. On the basis of solutions, the healthcare IT integration market is segmented into products and services. The healthcare integration products market is further bifurcated into interface/integration engines, medical device integration software, media integration solutions, and other integration tools

The Exercise classes for over the 65s assist to cut falls threat

It is merely your average on the day of Monday morning at Morden Baptist Church in south-west London, and people aged 65 plus are arriving for exercise classes designed for those who are risk of falling.

Falls are a major public health issue and the most usual cause of death from wound in over 65s. The King’s Fund estimates that falls account for 40 percent of all ambulance call outs, and are a major cause of older persons being admitted to hospital. It puts the cost of falls to the England’s NHS at £2bn a year.

The Morden classes – dealing muscle deterioration, specifically in legs and ankles – have been running for a year. They are commissioned by Merton clinical commissioning group from trust’s falls prevention service and were placed by service lead Stephanie Bruggemann.

 “The borough has gone from having exercise classes which were 1 size fits all with about 20 persons coming and merely one freelance instructor, to outcome-measured, ability-graded sessions which involve a health advice component, and are completely targeted at preventing falls,” claims Bruggemann.\

What will the latest technology do for the healthcare?

Technology is undoubtedly revolutionizing healthcare, with the clearest instance being the ease with which we can Google signs and convince ourselves we are at death’s door.

There is, although, health tech far more sophisticated in comparison to typing symptoms into search bars. Self-testing genetics kits can inform us of our threat of common conditions and likelihood of going bald; wearables can measure our heart rate and remind us to move; virtual interviewers can track depression; and smartphone apps can assist people with conditions like autism live independently.

On an individual level these technologies offer new ways of preventing, tracking and treating illness, and on a societal level they can give a wealth of data and insights. Umotif, for instance, is seeking to detect the health of 100,000 persons to establish a better understanding of Parkinson’s disease.

Report to Congress recommends product guidance post for ONC

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has sent a report to Congress analyzing the feasibility of assisting the contributors to compare and choose certified EHRs (electronic health records) products.

The report was mandated and conducted under the authority of Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), but with the EHR Incentive and Regional Extension Center programs winding down, ONC is observing how contributors can sustain to get critical support with executing the IT (information technology).

Support is yet necessary, ONC considers, as various contributors are upgrading or replacing EHRs they purchased to gain meaningful use, and they are retooling as they get prepared for reforms in healthcare.

“Improving providers’ capability to compare and choose certified health IT will need several mechanisms that reply on support from both the federal government and private sector,” in accordance to the report.

But the extent to which ONC can offer this level of support is not still clear, appreciates a senior advisor at ONC, talking on background. But the report puts concepts on the table.

ONC already provides a Health IT Playbook to assist in choosing products, and regional extension centers, which have gave contributors technical and care transformation support, are yet functioning, however funding for the REC program is running out. The other various federal resources could come from MACRA technical assistance, as well as the Agency for Healthcare Quality, the Office of Minority Health MACRA technical assistance and Research’s Evidence Now program.

The CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services), which is ramping up the latest Transforming Clinical Practices Initiative, is observing at support for physicians changing into value-based care, like providing tools at a 1-stop shop to compare vendor items. For now, the ONC report provides merely a recommendation, with no firm concepts for how it could be funded, in accordance to the OCR senior advisor.

“ONC could operate with the healthcare community to seek feedback on comparison tool requirements and share great practices with the comparison tool community,” the agency stated in its report to Congress.

In a proposed transparency initiative that could be of real value, ONC during this time of spring is releasing information from its Certified Health IT Product List under what it terms “open data” CHPL. The expectation is that the private sector and expert societies or associations will make product rankings and reviews. Also under the act of “open data” CHPL, HIT vendors were need by the day of April 13 to submit the proposed attestations that they’ll be transparent in their transaction fees and not involve in data blocking.

 

How Digital Healthcare Assists Patients and Contributors?

Improved communication between healthcare contributors and sufferers almost always results in greater patient satisfaction and better results.

The reasons are clear: Exchanging information about symptoms, treatment options, insurance coverage, test results and more means that patients and caregivers are working in collaboration, leaving both groups more knowledgeable and better informed.

Email Communication

Thanks to digital technology, contributors and sufferers now have more ways than ever to communicate. Recent research indicates the tangible benefits of digital healthcare (often called connected care).

Patient Web Portals

Patient web portals offer clients a versatile platform for gaining data from and communicating with healthcare contributors. Participants in the Kaiser Permanente study referenced above consisted of 1,041 sufferers with chronic conditions, involving those who use Kaiser’s My Health Manager patient portal. In addition to offering sufferers with basic personal medical data, appointment schedules and insurance details, many Internet-based portals permit consumers to securely email and/or message healthcare providers, make payments and request refills of prescribed medications.

Mobile Technology

Another critical component of digital healthcare is mobile technology. Customers can use their smartphones and tablets to safely access their patient portals, no matter where they are. Some contributors offer mobile apps that make it easier for sufferers to communicate with them and access data. Providers also utilize mobile apps and wireless technology to automatically collect data about patients, like weight and glucose levels.

Not all Chicago insurer frightens a united Advocate-NorthShore

Not every Chicago-area insurers oppose a potential merger between Advocate Health Care and NorthShore University HealthSystem, in accordance to testimony Monday in the Federal Trade Commission's case against the proposed deal.

UnitedHealthcare supports the potential tie-up, stated Joanne Beck, vice president of network management for its parent company, UnitedHealth Group. United considers the merger will lower the cost of care by expanding Advocate's population health management program and the quality measures it has applied, Beck stated during testimony in U.S District Court in the state of Chicago. The FTC is seeking a preliminary injunction to block the deal pending the result of its administrative challenge.

United plays a distant 2^nd place in the Chicago place to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois. United has about 15 percent to 16 percent of the market and Blue Cross has about 65 percent to 70 percent, Beck claimed.

Why Does Health Care Cost? Check Out Tuesday With Providence Health and Services of Western Montana

Providence Health and Services of Western Montana is sponsoring a free community talk today known as “Transforming Health Care: The Cost of Care.” Chief Executive Jeff Fee stated that people will learn about the driving forces that affect health care prices and what the future holds for your health care costs.

“They made the assumption that when somebody bought a policy in the month of January, that that individual would continue paying for that policy for that year,” Fee stated. “What they found, and this is something across the nation, is that persons are purchasing policies, having their medical process done, and then stopping paying. Their health policies end up faced with claims that are multiples of the premiums they collected on that claim.”

Fee said there are still persons who also have not bought health care insurance policies.

Greatest Health Insurer Bailing On Much Obamacare Exchanges

UnitedHealth Group, the greatest health insurer in the U.S., will pull out of most states’ Obamacare exchanges next year, the company declared on the day of Tuesday.

UnitedHealth cited about $1 billion in losses over the past 2 years for the firm’s decision to significantly scale back its business on the health insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act.

UnitedHealth offers policies on the exchange marketplaces in 34 states this year, but will merely remain in a “handful” of states in the year 2017, UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley claimed during a conference call on the company’s quarterly earnings. The company cautioned in the month of November it might bail on the marketplaces nationwide.

The UnitedHealth Group announcement and warning symbols from other health insurers that Obamacare enrollees are costlier than hoped to serve as a reminder of how new and how fragile the health insurance exchange marketplaces are ahead of the open enrollment period for the year 2017 coverage, which begins this fall.

President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul may have extended health coverage to an estimated 20 million persons and brought the uninsured amount to an all-time low, but its future sustains to be uncertain as market dynamics continue to play out. No matter what UnitedHealth Group may be doing next year, it is going to take longer than that to determine whether the regulated, subsidized health insurance exchange market will be viable long period.

UnitedHealth Group to exit Obamacare exchanges in all but a ‘handful’ of states

UnitedHealth Group, the nation's greatest health insurer, stated on the day of Tuesday that in the year 2017 it will exit most of the 34 states where it offers policies on the Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges.

"We will be down to a handful of states that we will be actively engaging in the exchanges," Stephen J. Hemsley, chief executive officer of UnitedHealth Group claimed in an earnings call, noting that the small market size and greater expense of sufferers insured through the marketplaces led the insurer to make the decision.

UnitedHealth plans to withdraw from health insurance marketplaces in Arkansas, Michigan, Connecticut and parts of Georgia. The decision is a sequel to an declaration by executives late initial year that the insurer had suffered financial losses and might leave the health exchanges altogether in the year 2017. UnitedHealth reported that it hopes to lose $650 million in the exchanges in the year 2016.

Telemedicine empowers sufferer satisfaction at urgent care chain

For several urgent care contributors, telemedicine is a competitor that is siphoning off patients.

That is not the opinion of Doctor’s Care, which is ramping up its utilization of telemedicine as a way to offer sufferers more choices for receiving care.

The chain of fifty-five centers in South Carolina and Tennessee is spreading its offerings with a minimal contribution in technology, utilizing information and communications systems that it already has in place.

While various urgent care center operators are wary that telemedicine may divert sufferers from its basic facilities that are not the perspective of David Boucher, president and chief operating officer of UCI Medical Affiliates, which gives non-medical support facilities for the chain and operates the centers.

“This is something that we require to do,” Boucher claims. “This is merely observing at this as a consumer, and when we did that, we only claimed that this is where [care] is going, and so we have to have few type of service offering here.”

Doctors Care 1^st started examining telemedicine in the year 2013, analyzing it as a way to balance loads between its services or facilities. Wait times at few of its urgent care location could be 3 hours or more, while other sites had no wait times. By equipping facilities with telemedicine capabilities, it would be capable to give sufferers at busy facilities the chance to be seen instantly and remotely.

While few urgent care operators have had mixed outcomes with utilizing telemedicine for load balancing, Doctors Care discovered that sufferers chose to be analyzed remotely. In entire examinations, a nurse is with sufferers in the facility at which they present.

In its load balancing access, there is a high-definition or HD connection for the locations, and an all-in-one camera that supports otoscope and dermatology observation of the throat, ear, eye, nose, or skin. Bluetooth-enabled stethoscopes are utilized at both presentation and contributor locations, and sufferers are capable to have lab and X-ray processes at the presentation location; physicians analyzing sufferers remotely can switch to another sufferer until these tests are run.

The IT contribution for load balancing was minor, Boucher claims. Instead of installing entirely new infrastructure to motivate telemedicine, Doctors Care was capable to make off its existing telephone and network complex from Cisco.

The ability helped Doctors Choice to acquire 2 of its key targets of decreasing sufferer wait times and increasing sufferer satisfaction, states Boucher, who is offering a presentation on the chain’s experiences at this week’s popular spring conference of the Urgent Care Association of America in the state of Orlando, Fla.

Portals, sufferer photos pose potential security gaps

As the healthcare industry sustains to confront cybersecurity risks and seek ways to make better the defenses, it must consider every avenue that might lead to access to patient data.

Some potential gaps are not as clear, and contributors must look carefully at any potential gap in their perimeter defenses, claims security professional Keith Fricke.

For instance, there is a potential security gap within the patient portals that contributors are offering to sufferers as they seek to comply with needsof the electronic health records meaningful use program, claims Fricke, principal consultant at tw-Security in Overland Park, Kan.

Various cyber criminals have the acumen to insert malicious code into frequently visited web sites, and when a person approaches the site, that code tries to download to a user’s computer.

If a user’s computer does not have security controls and becomes infected with the malicious code, and then the user accesses the hospital’s sufferer portal, malware might be capable to offer a criminal access the patient’s infected computer, and the criminal may learn of the patient portal, Fricke claims.

Healthcare workers routinely stealing prescription drugs

The epidemic of prescription drug addiction has gotten so worse that healthcare employees are routinely stealing pills from pharmacies and healthcare services. An investigation by the Columbus Dispatch found that nearly 217 healthcare employees in Ohio were implicated in the theft of prescription drugs in the year 2014. And the issue may be far worse, since It is likely that internal theft gets underreported.

LIFE SCIENCES

The International Cancer Genome Consortium declared policies to launch the International Cancer Genome Consortium for Medicine, a project that seeks to advance research by linking ICGC data with clinical data.

The New York Center for Nanomedicine Research, based in Buffalo, has signed a strategic development agreement with the Ottawa-based International Centre for Advancement of Health Regional Innovation and Science to research non-invasive nanotechnologies for a variety of illnesses.

Healthcare IT VC Investing at $1.4 billion in Q1 2016

Venture capital firms contributed $1.4 billion through 146 deals in healthcare IT companies internationally in the 1^st quarter of 2016, a report by Mercom Capital Group stated today.

This is higher by 27% from the October-December 2015 quarter when $1.1 billion was pumped in. It was also up 74% compared to the same quarter of previous year.

Total corporate funding raised in the sector involving VC, debt and public market financing for January-March 2016 came to $1.5 billion, Mercom stated.

"The Health IT sector is off to an impressive start this year with significant funding activity in the first quarter led by wearables, data analytics and telemedicine," Mercom Capital Group CEO and co-founder Raj Prabhu said.

Data analytics and telemedicine companies reached an important milestone, each crossing $1 billion in funding raised to date, he added.

Time to Confront the Ransomware Issues in U.S. Healthcare: Industry Experts Speak Out

The 1^st nationally reported mainstream media news story in this drama was that nearly Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center. On the day of Friday, February 12, NBC4News, the regional affiliate of the NBC network in Los Angeles, reported in its noon and evening broadcasts, and then online, this story: “Hollywood Hospital ‘Victim of Cyber Attack.’” As the online version of the story, by Jason Kandel and Robert Kovacik, said, “A Southern California hospital was a victim of a cyber-attack, interfering with day-to-day operations, the hospital’s president and CEO said. Staff at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center started noticing ‘significant IT problems and announced an internal emergency’ on the day of Friday, said hospital President and CEO Allen Stefanek. A doctor who did not need to be identified said the system was hacked and was being held for ransom.”

In the days that followed, more news reports appeared, confirming that, among other things, the electronic health record (EHR) and other clinical information systems at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center had been shut down for more than a week, and confirming that a ransomware attack had taken place, and claiming that the cybercriminals behind it were demanding $3.6 million to restore the system.

Healthcare CEO Pay: These Major Executives Raked In Millions In the year 2015 After Deals, Involving Inversions

Pay for chief executives at few of the largest corporations in the U.S. dipped 3.8% last year, but healthcare executives emerged from that slowdown relatively unscathed. For various highest-paid executives in the industry, the tens of millions of dollars — or more — they got in compensation followed special deals or were tied to strange circumstances, in accordance to a new analysis by Modern Healthcare.

Some of those greatest-paid healthcare executives oversaw mergers and acquisitions of the variety that have generated primary controversy in recent months, for their roles in permitting companies to ignore U.S. taxes or to possibly increase drug prices.

Joe Kiani, the founder and CEO of medical technological company Masimo, raked in $119.2 million in the year 2015 — the largest amount for any executive at an investor-owned healthcare company, in accordance to Modern Healthcare's analysis. Of that, $111.9 million came from shares of limited stock in the company that Kiani would get under certain circumstances; one reason would be if Kiana were fired, and others involved his relocating from Southern California for the company's sake or control of the company changing hands. In the year 2014, Kiani earned $4.5 million.

Health Care Insider: Compassion Exhaustion - When It Becomes Enough for Nurses to Care

Nursing can be not merely be mentally and physically demanding, but also emotionally draining. Nurses must treat their sufferers with kindness and compassion for long and demanding shifts. Few nurses, although, can burn out on caring for sufferers. It is known as Compassion Fatigue, and Patricia Morton seeks what causes the condition, warning symptoms to watch for and measures nurses can take to regain devotion for their work.

Interviewer: Nursing can be a very much emotionally draining job at period because not just are you taking care of sufferers but you have to be sympathetic and many times, you get emotionally engaged with those sufferers. Is there ever a time where a nurse only kind of burns out on that and is not capable to do that anymore?

Patricia: There actually is and we have coined the word "compassion fatigue" to discuss about that. And we speak to our students about that so that they comprehend that is a possibility and what they may do to stop it. But remember, nursing no doubt much physically demanding, it is emotionally demanding, not just are you hoped to be compassionate and care for sufferers but you are continually drawing upon your education of physiology and science so that you are caring for those sufferers, stopping the complications, tracking early changes. So you are pulling truly from all sides of your brain.

Interviewer: Yeah, that could be very annoying. So what are few of the symptoms that compassion fatigue might be setting in? What are few of the things to look for?

Patricia: Well, what I have observed in my career is some persons then start to shut down their emotions as a way to secure themselves. And sadly, then, that shut down can come across to a sufferer and their family as, "I do not truly care about your case." Sometimes, it comes into nursing when they feel compassion fatigue that they have become irritated or bitter and so what I claim to my students is, "If you start to feel that way, you have to actually pay attention to those symptoms."

You have to get assistance, you have to discuss with your co-workers, you require taking a break and recharging your own battery and knowing in your life what does recharge your battery and be alert to that. You cannot let compassion fatigue sustain because it is a detriment to the sufferers and families, but it us a detriment to yourself because you are not being honest to yourself.

Interviewer: Is this something that most persons can identify when it happen to themselves or is it difficult to identify when you are really going through it? Because I consider it would be easier to identify externally with somebody else.

Patricia: I have observed that it is tough for few persons to recognize in themselves.

Interviewer: But not all?

Patricia: Not all.

Interviewer: Okay.

Patricia: But sometimes, individuals do not know what is happening to them? Why are they eventually not feeling fulfilled in this post? Why do they suddenly feel irritated? Why are they eventually going home and feel like they did not have a good day at all? What is going on? And so I have had co-workers where you sometimes merely take on my side and say, "You merely seem much burned out. How can I assist you? Do you require a day? What can we do? Shall we have a group session?"

I can remember being a brand latest nurse in the intensive care unit. We had eleven sufferers in our intensive care unit for Christmas Day. By New Year's Day, all eleven had lost their lives and I was a new nurse and I was attempting to cope with that, that I assisted every one of those sufferers have a Christmas Day with their family in the ICU. But each day after that, one by one, eleven persons breathed last and working with their families and assisting them through it. And I remember claiming to myself as a new nurse, "How am I ever going to do this?"

And it was then that our unit brought in our hospital chaplain to meet with all of us as nurses to assist us through that, and I merely remember how primary it was that persons recognize how difficult losing eleven patients in 1 week at the holidays, how difficult that was for the nurses and that they brought in assistance for us. I am worried that we are not assisting nurses enough when they are experiencing compassion fatigue.

Interviewer: How can we overcome that? Because I mean I guess to certain extent, I do get why other persons that are not nurses might not notice that. We're all very busy, we are attempting to keep these hospitals running, we are all trying to keep these sufferer healthy. What is your thought on how we overcome that?

Patricia: Well, I consider we have to be much more attentive to it. As leaders in units and in hospitals, we have to actually identify it may be happening and be proactive and bring in might be facilitators of support group negotiations. Have other ways that may be meaningful to the staff to have few relief times, have fun time together to make the team back up. And it is not distinctive to nurses. I am certain that it happens to physicians, your co-workers, in physical therapy, occupational therapy, all of our contributors who are addressing with very hard cases. Think of EMTs out in the field, what they deal with, trauma contributors.

Interviewer: Because it is like for few persons, it may be going out and running for six miles. Somebody else it might be I merely require to discuss to somebody about it, somebody else it might be I just require to go home, have a hot meal, go to bed, get up, I am fine.

Patricia: But you have to seek what is it that is going to recharge your battery and not let your battery run dry for long times. And so you have to be attentive and truly know yourself. What is it that is going to bring renewal? We’ve to have that for nurses.