As Coronavirus Strikes, Crucial Data In Electronic Health Records Hard To Harvest
The U.S. government spent $36 billion computerizing health records, yet they鈥檙e of limited help in the COVID-19 crisis.
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The U.S. government spent $36 billion computerizing health records, yet they鈥檙e of limited help in the COVID-19 crisis.
HHS said this test would 鈥渟ave personal protective equipment.鈥 But Abbott鈥檚 very design 鈥 devised for mobile testing 鈥 means those working with specimens need even more protection, experts warn.
Under the national emergency, the government has waived a law that required patients to have an in-person visit with a physician before they could be prescribed drugs that help quell withdrawal symptoms, such as Suboxone. Now they can get those prescriptions via a phone call or videoconference with a doctor. That may give video addiction therapy a kick-start.
鈥淯nscrupulous providers鈥 could take advantage of the boom in treatment delivered via voice or video calls.
With hospitals struggling to get more ventilators, they must ensure every ventilator they have is ready for service. But manufacturers limit who can repair them.
Big data plays a critical role in the success of current public health efforts to control the spread of the coronavirus. Privacy advocates, though, are watching closely.
Just 5 miles from Mar-a-Lago, the POTUS鈥 outpost, Florida residents find that the president鈥檚 pledge to make testing accessible hasn鈥檛 materialized.
The rapidly spreading coronavirus has led to the cancellation of sporting events, conferences and travel, with Congress and President Donald Trump scrambling to catch up to the spiraling public health crisis. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has issued long-awaited rules aimed at making it easier for patients to carry copies of their medical records. Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times, Paige Winfield Cunningham of The Washington Post and Kimberly Leonard of Business Insider join KHN鈥檚 Julie Rovner to discuss this and more. Also, for extra credit, the panelists suggest their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read, too.
Patients would have far more control over their health care with complete medical histories stored on their phones, proponents say.
The web-based standard FHIR 鈥 pronounced 鈥渇ire鈥 鈥 could hasten the day when we can view our full medical histories on a smartphone screen. Tech giants are hungry for a piece of the pie, but obstacles remain.
As happens when the tech industry gets involved, hype surrounds the claims that artificial intelligence will help patients and even replace some doctors.
The federal government funneled billions in subsidies to software vendors and some overstated or deceived the government about what their products could do, according to whistleblowers.
Over the past decade, government efforts to create a national system to track and analyze deaths, injuries and other adverse incidents linked to electronic health records repeatedly have failed amid opposition from the technology industry and its supporters in Congress.
Special interests and congressional inaction blocked efforts to track the safety of electronic medical records, leaving patients at risk.
Despite laws requiring that health care providers hand over copies of patient records in a timely fashion, many people have trouble getting theirs. Ciitizen, a Palo Alto, Calif., company that helps cancer patients with the task, recently published a scorecard that rates hospitals, doctors and clinics on their compliance with records requests.
It鈥檚 November, do you know where your HHS spending bill is? Still stuck in Congress. Meanwhile, lawmakers move ahead on restricting tobacco products for youth while the administration鈥檚 proposal is MIA. Rebecca Adams of CQ Roll Call and Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico join KHN鈥檚 Julie Rovner to discuss this and more health news from the week. Also, Rovner interviews Dan Weissmann, host of the podcast 鈥淎n Arm and a Leg.鈥
Companies are aggressively touting 3D mammograms, although there鈥檚 no evidence they save lives.
For more than a decade, customers used the online plan finder to compare dozens of policies. Yet after a redesign of the website, the search results no longer list which plan offers a customer the best value. Federal officials say it will be fixed before enrollment begins next week.
Groupon and other deal sites are the latest marketing tactic in medicine, offering bargain prices but potentially unnecessary, duplicative services.
People with diabetes say they鈥檝e been waiting for years for better technology to manage their chronic condition. Tired of waiting, some tech-savvy, do-it-yourselfers are constructing their own devices using open-source programming instructions.
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