Research in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association studied the Veterans Health Administration electronic medical record system and found that EHRs are associated with frequent patient safety issues, some from poor user actions, but the majority from issues with the software itself.
Linden Care, a pain management specialty pharmacy and portfolio company of BelHealth, is acquiring Quick Care to expand its presence to the West Coast.
KPMG is buying Zannet Commercial Solutions, which provides health care information technology consulting to the health care industry, according to the Wall Street Journal.
According to a paper at the National Bureau of Economic Research, requiring insurers to allow children up to age 26 to be covered under their parents' insurance raised inpatient mental services use by 3.5% and overall mental health visits by 9%.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w20202
Jun192014
ClearCare has received an $11 million investment for its software service for home health care agencies.
A firm headed by the former chief of the HHS HIT office, Aledade, has received $4.5 million in seed money to help independent physicians create and operate ACOs.
Monroe Capital has lent $15.5 million to Pharos Capital to support that company's acquisition of Employee Benefit Solutions, a provider of wellness and cost management programs.
Private equity firm Genstar Capital is apparently going to sell Evolution1, a consumer-directed health plan payments company, for $535 million to WEX, Inc., a large publicly-held credit card company.
Jun172014
Technology implementation consultant Cumberland Consulting Group is buying Cipe Consulting Group, expanding its West Coast Presence and gaining more EHR and revenue cycle software expertise.
Research in the Quarterly Journal of Economics uses a large disenrollment from Tennessee's low-income health care coverage program to study the effects of basically free public health insurance on job seeking and employment. Losing access to free coverage results in people looking for and finding more jobs, largely those with health care coverage. Getting free coverage means fewer people will work, a consequence the CBO projects in regard to the reform law. While some idiots decry the terrible problem of people having to work at jobs they don't like to keep health care coverage, we prefer to be concerned about the poor working saps who have to pay exorbitant tax rates to pay for slackers' health care, while their own health care costs skyrocket.
The use of administrative data, as opposed to chart review, to gather information on hospital readmissions, results in incorrect reasons for the readmission in about a third of cases, according to research in JAMA Surgery, which could seriously affect penalties levied on hospitals under the CMS program to reduce readmissions.
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at khroche@healthy-skeptic.com.
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at khroche@healthy-skeptic.com.