Reimbursement for home monitoring gradually expands

By Neil Versel

Barriers to reimbursement for telehealth services are falling, slowly.

One of the most recent victories came in Massachusetts, where lawmakers this summer approved a general appropriations bill that included Medicaid reimbursement for remote monitoring services in patient homes. This action, passed over a veto by Gov. Deval Patrick, makes Massachusetts the 12th state to approve Medicaid payments for home monitoring, according to the American Telemedicine Association.

In fact, the Massachusetts legislation has a bit of a catch: it applies only to home health agencies, not hospitals or physician practices, which is why the Massachusetts Medical Association declined to comment. The Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts, however, was ecstatic.  More

Johns Hopkins launches mHealth Evidence reference site

The mHealth Evidence site brings together sources and research related to feasibility, usability and efficacy of mobile healthcare technologies, though Boncana said there still remains limited data on health outcomes. It includes a searchable database and what Boncana said is a way to help researchers know where there are gaps in the literature.

mHealth Evidence currently contains close to 4,400 records, and will automatically pulls in new, relevant citations from PubMed, the National Library of Medicine’s index of medical literature. More

Slideshow: 10 Patients Apps from US Children’s Hospitals

One trend that emerged while researching MobiHealthNews’ most recent report, 205 Hospital-branded apps for patients, was that children’s hospitals are far and away the most creative and ambitious of healthcare providers in the United States using mobile apps for patient engagement.

Click Here for mobile apps from US Children's Hospitals

FDA’s final guidance for mobile medical apps

The two broad categories of apps that the FDA regulates, according to the final guidance, are:

1. are intended to be used as an accessory to a regulated medical device – for example, an application that allows a health care professional to make a specific diagnosis by viewing a medical image from a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) on a smartphone or a mobile tablet; or
2. transform a mobile platform into a regulated medical device – for example, an application that turns a smartphone into an electrocardiography (ECG) machine to detect abnormal heart rhythms or determine if a patient is experiencing a heart attack.

• The FDA also published an important guidance document for mobile health devicemakers — the hardware side of the industry — in August. The guidance on device interoperability had been in the works even longer than the mobile medical apps document.
  
  Read the FDA’s final guidance for mobile medical apps here. (PDF)
   

Telehealth powers Population Health Management

Population Health is one of the three cornerstones of healthcare’s “Triple Aim” – which includes

• Improving the experience of care
• Improving the health of populations
• Reducing the per capita costs of healthcare 

Briefly, Population Health looks beyond the health outcome of an individual. It looks at outcomes across a group as well as the distribution of outcomes within that group. 



The Healthcare Intelligence Network has put together a nice infographic that summarizes how telehealth powers Population Health Management.

It covers:

• How people are using telehealth for clinical vs. non-clinical purposes
• Top clinical areas targeted for telehealth
• The top technologies being employed for telehealth
• Top types of clinical applications for telehealth
• How they are tapping the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) provisions that support telehealth

You can use this infographic to

• Determine if your telehealth solution is aligned with where others are going
• Determine how you can tie telehealth into the ACA’s provisions
• Determine your best clinical options for implementing telehealth 

 

(Hands On Telehealth) Nirav Desai via aweber.com

Medication Adherence: Getting America to Take Its Medicine

The Healthcare Intelligence Network is the leading online source of healthcare business information.
Complex patients remain the top targets of programs to improve medication adherence (MA), but more than half now also zero in on MA levels during transitions in care — up from 37 percent in 2012.
This HINfographic on Medication Adherence illustrates a wealth of data on current programs, including the most likely targets of MA programs, the most common barriers to medication compliance, the most influential tools, and the conditions that respond most favorably to efforts to improve MA.
This Medication Adherence HINfographic is derived from data published in 2013 Healthcare Benchmarks: Medication Adherence.  

More

Patient and Family Engagement

The Patient and Family Engagement module of the CUSP Toolkit focuses on making sure patients and their family members understand what is happening during the patient's hospital stay, are active participants in the patient's care, and are prepared for discharge.  AHRQ   More

FL Patients Too Poor to Enroll: DOH

© Health News Florida Floridians who use county health departments for primary care are mostly too poor to qualify for enrollment in a health plan through the online Marketplace to open Oct. 1, 2013, the Department of Health says.  More

Final FDA Rule Out for Medical Device Unique Identifiers

Six years after authorizing legislation was enacted, the Food and Drug Administration has issued a final rule to establish a unique device identifier for medical devices.
Read More »

HHS Site Aims To Educate About Health Information Exchange

Yesterday, HHS launched a website aimed at helping health care providers educate their patients on making informed decisions about health information exchange. Meanwhile, two Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT officials explained the decision to launch the website in a Health Affairs Blog post. The Hill's "Healthwatch" et al. More

Electronic Nursing Documentation: Charting New Territory

Medscape Nurses

• Nurses Speak Up About Electronic Charting
• Advantages of Electronic Charting
• EHRs Take Too Much Time
• Perception, Reality, and Learning Curves
• Too Many Check Boxes, Too Little Narrative
• Changing Nurses' Workflow: Real-Time Charting
• Point-of-Care Charting
• Whose Chart Is It, Anyway?
• From User-Unfriendly to Nurses' Best Friend
• More

5 ways to link health information technology, quality measurement

A new report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) summarizes the comments it received on its July 2012 request for information and from focus groups on how to enhance quality measurement through health information technology.    More

Consumers Spend 52 Hours Online Annually Searching for Health Info

A new study finds that U.S. consumers each spend about 52 hours online annually searching for health information. WebMD is the most accessed online source, and personal computers are the preferred tool to conduct such searches, according to the report. FierceHealthIT.  More

EHRs Associated With Fewer ED Visits, Hospitalizations, Study Finds

A study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that the use of electronic health record systems is associated with a modest decrease in emergency department visits and hospitalizations among patients with diabetes. Medical News Today et al. More

EHR adverse events data cause for alarm

MDLYNX NURSING: Healthcare IT News, 09/09/2013

Software default values, though implemented for safety, are proving in many cases to be harmful for patients if not used properly. After analyzing more than 300 event reports related to EHR software default values, more than 3 percent were found to result in unsafe conditions or prolonged hospitalization for patients, according to a new report by the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority. More

Study: Facebook Groups Could Boost HIV Education, Testing

A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine finds that Facebook could help educate high-risk individuals about HIV prevention and testing. Forty-four percent of study participants assigned to an HIV prevention Facebook group requested a no-cost HIV home testing kit, according to the study. NPR's "Shots" et al.  More