Blog Entries
 By David Kelleher On Friday, February 8, 2013 - 4:45pm
The following is a guest post by David E. Kelleher, President of HealthCare Options, Inc. and Executive Director of the Employers' Forum of Indiana. One of the challenges confronting newly formed Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) is the lack of available information to assist in establishing achievable performance targets. Recently, we happily "discovered" the work of the CMS's Office of Information Products and Data Analytics (OIPDA). The information is available via the Institute of Medicine. There is a lot of information here. It is organized by Hospital Referral Region (HRR) for five years, 2007 through 2011 and includes a wealth of information: beneficiary counts, demographics, proportion of patients with different illnesses, total spending, utilization rates and per capita costs in a number of useful breakdowns, hospital compare and PQI information. This could be a somewhat intimidating amount of information. Read more » |
 By Steven Randazzo On Thursday, February 7, 2013 - 4:51pm
In the last few years, the use of mobile health as a tool to improve individual and family health as well as to improve patient-provider communication has grown tremendously. Personalized tools and the ability to get instant access to information have empowered individuals to be more engaged in managing their health. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has taken steps to embrace these new models of consumer education and outreach through programs such as smokefree.txt, text4baby, and challenge opportunities to encourage innovation. Recently, the Department released a Request for Information on a new library of messages called TXT4Tots which provides evidence-based information on nutrition and physical activity targeted to parents, providers, and caregivers of children ages 1-5 years. Read more » |
 On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 - 1:37pm
By Pierce Graham-Jones, West Health Innovator-in-Residence, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Ryan Panchadsaram, Presidential Innovation Fellow, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT Since launching the Automate Blue Button Initiative six months ago, we have been working toward two aims: Ensure that every American can get access to their digital health information. Help application developers use that data to build products and services that help individuals with their health. Blue Button is a symbol for patient access to their personal health information in a useable and safe digital format. It has spread from the federal government to the private sector. Thanks to the efforts of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Office of Personnel Management and Blue Button pledge community, more than 80 million Americans can now download their health information with a click of a button. Blue Button Improvements Read more » |
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By Steven Randazzo On Friday, February 1, 2013 - 12:07pm
Want a full recap of what went on in the world of innovation at Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 2012? Hear from Bryan Sivak, Chief Technology Officer and Entrepreneur in Residence for HHS, as he gives a run down of the top 10 accomplishments in innovation at the Department. Accomplishments include the adoption of a Department-wide collaboration tool to the development of even more applications using healthdata. So check it out! Read more » |
 By Bryan Sivak On Monday, January 28, 2013 - 9:18am
Our endeavor to improve the quality and performance of the health care system has many facets and often I am asked to point to examples of how our country’s approach to health care needs to change. We at HHS have been laser focused on the uses of innovative care models and how data generated by the clinical practice setting can be put to use. Last week, I visited one of the sites of ChenMed – a real-world practice model which demonstrates these principles. Read more » |