It’s been another busy week in the healthcare industry. Here are some highlights from the week.
Health information technology will lead the way for the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, which has selected 500 primary care practices in seven regions to participate in the new Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative (CPC), according to a story by Joseph Goedert.
The CPC is a multi-payer initiative bringing together public and private healthcare payers to strengthen primary care, Goedert reported. Medicare will work with commercial and state health insurance plans to offer bonus payments to primary care doctors who better coordinate care for their patients.
Shortly after Yael Cohen’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, Cohen realized that there was no community for women to ask questions, talk to other patients and survivors, or find a way to ease the terror and panic most felt at hearing those dreaded words. So the 25-year-old Vancouver, B.C. resident decided to make one – through social media. Three years later, as the developer of letsfcancer.com, a Facebook page and a Twitter account, she had a live chat with Scott Herbert of mashable.com and was chosen as one of the 100 most creative people in business by fastcompany.com.
Though it doesn’t sound small, the global market for cardiac rhythm management (CRM) devices will see only minimal growth through 2016, to a value of over $9.6 billion, according to Millennium Research Group (MRG), an aggregator of medical technology market intelligence. The report noted that the CRM market is “mature and saturated, with little anticipated growth in procedure volumes, and a significant downward pressure on selling prices,” while adding that some technological improvements will allow for premium-priced sales – particularly in Europe and the United States.
Cloud computing is changing the way organizations of all types do business, especially the healthcare and financial industries. Cloud computing is simply using the Internet to store and manage information as opposed to servers based at hospital or company sites, but many concerns have arisen over the security and safety of data used in the cloud. These two industries particularly have been worried about their information, and not to mention have notably been a tad bit slower than most to adopt the cloud.
In today’s day and age, businesses are increasingly realizing that they’ll be left in the dust if they don’t. This prompts them to use the Web, mobile and social connectivity and emerging new technologies such as digital analytics to keep up with this fast pace.
Jumping on board the electronic health record (EHR) bandwagon, Walgreens will implement a customized EHR system from Greenway Medical Technologies in its nearly 8,000 pharmacies to better track all health services provided in the facilities, according to HealthData Management. The EHR is called WellHealth and Walgreens already uses the vendor’s PrimeSuite EHR in its Take Care convenient care clinics in more than 700 pharmacies. Now, WellHealth will coordinate other care in the pharmacies, as well as Take Care services, including medication records, immunizations and health tests, regardless of the Walgreens location where services were rendered, the story reported.
