IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Trinity Health, based in Novi, Mich., has engaged hospital information systems vendor Medseek (Solvang, Calif.) to develop an organizational e-health strategy for connecting clinicians, patients, and business partners through the Web. Morley Robbins, senior vice president of strategy, marketing, and communications at Trinity Health, says that the goal is to create a real-time health information exchange in order to “take the hassle factor out of working with Trinity Health.”

The national Privacy Rule for health information is a sorry beast in many ways. Promises to patients are conveyed in complex notices, largely unintelligible even to designated privacy officers. The Health and Human Services Department’s reliance on voluntary compliance and its refusal to impose fines on violators leaves consumers in the dark and believing the rules are not enforced at all.

The new network is intended to help make the Golden State a national leader in using telemedicine and broadband technology, officials said, and will link more than 300 health care facilities and 800 doctors’ offices to state and national broadband networks.

The grants will include technology improvements for safety net providers such as health clinics, critical access hospitals and country health departments.

However, the new project should help. The centers will now have access to specialists at UC-Merced via teleconferencing and other technology, which will be used to sustain remote consultations. Specialties represented will first include dermatology, psychiatry, pediatric specialties, endocrinology and gastroenterology, but more are to come.

The three-year, $27 million project will increase bandwidth capacity for telecommunications so that clinics, hospitals and other medical sites will be able to connect directly to all members of the network, plus external providers and services.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded the Information Trust Institute, or ITI, at the University a $15 million stimulus grant. The grant will allow the University to lead a consortium of 12 of the country’s top computer science and medical universities, including Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins University and Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded a $980,000 grant to help the institutions create the Heartland Telehealth Resource Center to accomplish the task.

“Almost any tool a health professional would normally use can be used through telemedicine,” Ryan Spaulding, director of the Center for Telemedicine and Telehealth at KU Med, said in the release. “Doctors are able to listen to patients’ hearts with stethoscopes, look in their ears with otoscopes and check their skin with dermascopes.”

Telemedicine and distance-learning programs will receive a boost from $34.9 million in grants awarded by the Agriculture Department for 111 projects in 35 states, USDA announced today.

The projects aim to increase educational opportunities and expand access to health care services in rural areas, according to department officials. The funding will be provided through USDA Rural Development's Distance Learning and Telemedicine Program.

The Salida telehealth clinic is staffed with registered nurses and has one mobile video conferencing unit that can be moved between examining rooms. It's the first of ten such clinics to open in the region. Jordan Schupbach is public affairs officer for the Veteran's Affairs Eastern Colorado Health Care System.

Both departments have recently made moves to ensure that the core capabilities for the interoperable health record will be in place by then, said Rear Adm. Greg Timberlake, program director of the DOD/VA Interagency Program. He spoke yesterday at the Government Health IT conference.

The centers, to be located at the White River Junction VA Medical Center in Vermont, at the Iowa City VA Medical Center, and at the Salt Lake City VA Medical Center, will serve as satellite offices for VA's Office of Rural Health,

“The rural resource centers are envisioned not to be providers of services but rather enablers of systematic care for veterans in rural communities,” Patricia Vandenberg, assistant deputy undersecretary of veterans affairs.

Mohit Kaushal, health care director for FCC, told a hearing of the Senate Special Committee on Aging on April 22 that through the remote systems clinicians used to treat patients at home, VA has reduced hospital admissions for 32,000 patients enrolled in its Care Coordination Home Telehealth Program.

A recent study found that the Department of Veterans Affairs generated savings of about $3 billion over 10 years by using health IT systems such as electronic health records. However, the private healthcare sector can also achieve comparable quality of care improvements and cost benefits with health IT as long as adoption is mass, systems are utilized, and standards compliance is met, said a VA official.

Each day, thousands of retired veterans don an electronic cuff at home that records their pulse and blood pressure and sends the information to care coordinators at the Veterans Health Administration. The patients also punch buttons in an electronic desktop box to indicate whether they feel shortness of breath or have swollen ankles. The care coordinators flag all problems that need immediate attention.

The Veterans Affairs and Defense departments want a contractor to evaluate how well they are sharing their patient records with each other and with other providers. The goal is to create a shared Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER) for each service member.

The VA and DOD published a sources sought notice on Jan. 12 that seeks a health analyst willing to visit four to six communities to analyze how the information sharing is progressing. Responses are due by Jan. 26.

Medication and medical mistakes contribute to 98,000 patients deaths each year in the United States. The Veterans Affairs Department is leading an effort to reduce that number with a wireless application designed to ensure that patients receive the correct medications.

Medication and medical mistakes contribute to 98,000 patients deaths each year in the United States. The Veterans Affairs Department is leading an effort to reduce that number with a wireless application designed to ensure that patients receive the correct medications.

VA not only has outpaced private hospitals in implementing health care IT systems, but the department is leapfrogging its private-sector counterparts in using mobile and wireless devices and applications directly in patient care.