Healthcare IT News - September 2007 - (Page 9)

www.HealthcareITNews.com industry news September 2007 ■ Healthcare IT News SiCKO raises hackles among healthcare It crowd news f Released earlier this year, o f SiCKO focuses on the stories of Healthcare IT News readers individual Americans who have who responded to been denied healthcare the most recent News or received inadequate Monitor poll said that care due to problems Michael Moore’s latest associated with the film SiCKO is relevant for-profit healthcare to healthcare informasystem in the United Michael Moore tion technology and its States. Moore proposes potential to influence healthcare that a single-payer system would reform. resolve many of the access and By rICHarD pIzzI, Associate Editor I f t y- f I V e perCeNt care quality issues. Forty-five percent of News Monitor poll respondents said Moore’s film was of no relevance to the healthcare IT community. Four hundred and sixty people responded to the question. “SiCKO is promoting equity healthcare which undoubt- MonItoR edly will impact decision making at all functional areas of healthcare including HIT,” wrote Johnny Yuen of wmsVision, Inc., in Morrisville, N.C. One anonymous reader agreed, revealing, “Over the course of my 30-year career in healthcare IT, I’ve observed millions of dollars expended by the hospitals for which I’ve been employed on conforming to the billing requirements of multiple insurance carriers.” “Unless the U.S. converts to a single-payer system such as Medicare, the industry will continue to spend similar dollars in the future for billing and detracting from the dollars available for other MoNITor see page 51 Legislation calls for revamp of quality programs By BerNIe MoNegaIN, Editor wasHINGtoN – Senate legislation introduced last month calls for the overhaul of the $400 million-a-year program charged with providing technical assistance to boost the quality of Medicare services. Sens. Charles charles Grassley Grassley (R-Iowa) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) sponsored the bill that calls for the remake of the Quality Improvement Organization Congress created 25 years ago to improve services delivered to Medicare beneficiaries. “It’s an oxymoron to have a quality improvement program that turns out to be poor quality,” Grassley said. “It needs a major overhaul. This program has evolved to have many different functions. Some of them are at cross-purposes, and the QIOs aren’t performing any of the functions well.” “We agree that it is time to modernize the nation’s QIO program but it appears that we disagree on how that should look,” said Marc Bennett, president of The American Health Quality Association, which represents the QIOs. “We are still reviewing the Grassley/Baucus proposal to understand their strategy more fully.” Just a year ago, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt outlined plans to boost the program. Leavitt’s report to Congress responded then to criticisms and recommendations that had been leveled in a series of studies from the Institute of Medicine. Leavitt noted the crucial role QIOs played in supporting one of the largest national efforts to provide help to physician offices in adoption of health information technology. The Grassley-Baucus bill calls for a greater focus of QIO efforts on technical assistance for quality improvement and performance measurement. It would require transitioning other QIO responsibilities, including complaint investigations, to other entities. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: QUaLItyS 0907 ● e ● Connect: PdS 0907 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.pdspc.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=7666 http://www.healthcareitnews.com/eConnect.cms?id=7711

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Healthcare IT News - September 2007

Contents Alaska Sweep SiCKO Debate Data Exchange Rx EDITH knows Hold That Script IT in the Sun Breathing Easy IT on the Menu Ambulatory EMRs Identity Crisis

Healthcare IT News - September 2007

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