Army medical treatment facilities are maintaining surgical safety by using the American College of Surgeon’s (ACS) www.facs.org National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) to monitor and compare patient safety data. (more…)
HIV Care for Rural Veterans
VA’s Dr Michael Ohl at the Iowa City VA Health Care System www.iowacity.va.gov and his team are conducting a study called “Telehealth Collaborative Care” to improve the quality of care for veterans with HIV who live far from specialty clinics. Approximately 18 percent of the 26,000 veterans under VA care for HIV live in rural areas. These veterans have limited access to high quality HIV specialty clinics. (more…)
New Analytic Tool Available
Thousands of healthcare providers across the country face new challenges in meeting CMS www.cms.gov Quality Payment Program expectations when transitioning to a higher quality patient-centered care model. Now a newly released analytic tool and web-based dashboard will help access patients’ longitudinal medical records. (more…)
Governors Comment on Healthcare
The National Governors Association’s (NGA) www.nga.org Chair Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe https://governor.virginia.gov, and Vice Chair Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval http://gov.nv.gov, discussed their collective priorities and recommendations for President Trump and Congress at a briefing held January 25, 2017 in Washington D.C. (more…)
Help for Patients with Epilepsy
About three million people in the U.S have epilepsy with Mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (MTLE) being the most common form of partial or localization related epilepsy. It is estimated that at least one-third of MTLE patients become drug resistant and continue to have seizures regardless of the number or type of anti-epileptic drugs used. (more…)
Gains in Interoperability
In California, the California Integrated Data Exchange (Cal INDEX) www.calindex.org and Inland Empire Health Information Exchange (IEHIE) www.iehie.org announced a planned merger to create a comprehensive nonprofit Health Information Exchange. The new HIE will combine the 11.7 million claims records from Cal INDEX with the 5 million clinical patient records of IEHIE and its 150 participating partners. (more…)
New Directions for Virtual Reality
Students at the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science http://seas.yale.edu have developed a virtual reality platform to allow for a closer examination of 3D images from kidney biopsies. So far, conventional methods to examine the kidneys provide only superficial images of the organ. (more…)