The New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange (NMHIX) partnered with Voxiva this month to launch a text message-based campaign in the hopes of encouraging New Mexicans to enroll in the exchange before the March 31, 2014 ObamaCare deadline.
To use the service, anyone local interested in enrolling in the exchange can text BeWellNM to 311411. They will then receive an automated text response prompting...
Four years ago Congress created a new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation as part of its Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Innovation Center's purpose was “to test innovative payment and service delivery models to reduce program expenditures... while preserving or enhancing quality of care.” Congress has allotted $10 billion to support the Innovation Center for its first ten...
A qualitative study by Weiss Cornell Medical Center found many benefits to digital patient-physician communication.
A new qualitative study from Weill Cornell Medical Center, published in Health Affairs, suggests that physician-patient communication by email or a secure patient portal offers significantly more advantages than disadvantages. However, the study authors speculate adoption of...
Last week Dr. Peter Budetti, Deputy Administrator for Program Integrity of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), announced the official launch of two new smartphone apps from CMS -- the agency's very first app offerings -- that aim to help physicians and others track payments and other information they receive from the industry as part of the transparency program called the...
By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn
The most important goals for health reform among mid size to large U.S. employers are to contain health care costs, encourage healthier lifestyles among employees, and improve quality of health care. However, very few employers believe health reform will accomplish those objectives.
Towers Watson surveyed American employers’ perspectives on the Patient Protection and...
An "odd couple" is how the New York Times described the pairing of insurer UnitedHealth and community fitness center chain YMCA.
In an effort to prevent members from developing diabetes, UnitedHealth Group announced this week that it would pay for 16-week at the YMCA that explain how changes in eating, exercise and other lifestyle habits can help prevent Type 2 diabetes. The program is free for...
The week that was in wireless health includes developments across a number of topics: business model (Best Buy again), devices (iPad, more), policy (mHealth in health reform), interoperability (WiThings?), innovation (Nokia made a big move), and much, much more. Here are some highlights from the week:
iPad, iPad, iPad. Let's start with the iPad since that's been struggling for some attention...
mHealth in Latin America: The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) launched a program to generate mobile phone-based services for the lower income populations in Latin America and the Caribbean. The services will address poverty problems, including health, education, social protection, employment and business, according to the IDB. Around 80 percent of the region’s population, or 460 million...
After spending the last few days at The Connected Health Symposium, which was put together by Partners HealthCare's Center for Connected Health and its affiliates, it's worth revisiting a contributed column that the Center's Director Joseph Kvedar penned for Healthspottr: "The Reason Why: Cheap & Easy Connected Health Tools Should Come Before EMRs." Rather controversial position to take...
By Jim Lefevere
I have talked in the past how health care and technology is the 10 year trend. I won't retell that story, but you can see my thoughts here. It is truly a topic where the reach consistently exceeds the grasp.
Technology once again plays a big role in the Obama health care reform plan with the multi-faceted goals of modernizing the system to lower cost and improve quality while also...
