Sep 13 2010
The American Hospital Association stepped up its advocacy efforts to get lawmakers to revisit a program that will reward hospitals for adopting electronic medical records by expanding its opportunities for hospital systems with multiple facilities, The Hill reports. "In an advocacy alert sent ... Thursday, the AHA requests that its members press lawmakers to get on board [with] legislation that would tweak regulations released in July. The AHA wants to amend a provision that says hospitals with multiple campuses are only eligible for one incentive payment if they share the same Medicare provider number" (Pecquet, 9/9).
Meanwhile, a new PricewaterhouseCoopers report says "40 percent [of U.S. adults] say they would be willing to pay for a remote monitoring device that sends health information directly to their doctor," United Press International reports. Also, 30 percent say they would use mobile phones to track and monitor their health. Twenty-seven percent said text messages reminding them to take medications would be helpful (9/10).
Government Health IT: The same report concluded that doctors also are using mobile devices widely. Two-thirds of doctors said they used their own mobile devices in their practice, while "[o]ne-third of that group reported that the leaders of their hospital or practice will not support the use of mobile health devices. Yet, more than half of the physicians using mobile devices in their practice said their devices help them make decisions faster and decrease time spent on administration" (Mosquera, 9/9).
 This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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