Congratulations to Dr. Farzad Mostashari!
Get Real Health board member Dr. Farzad Mostashari is launching a new firm, Aledade, to help independent primary care physicians form accountable care organizations (ACO). The former head of the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) will receive $4.5 million from venture capital firm Venrock as startup capital.
Aledade will help new ACO’s start off the ground with a ready-to-implement solution for managing technology, workflow redesign, compliance and quality reporting. This requires no upfront costs; instead, the company will take 40 percent when the ACO generates savings. Farzad and his three partners will initially test the concept in Arkansas, Delaware, Maryland, and NYC with a goal of expanding to be the largest primary care network in the US by its sixth year of operation. Congratulations!
Source: Modern Healthcare
Social Media for Your Health Records
Imagine HIPAA-compliant high-security healthcare websites that enable physicians to ‘tweet’ at each other about a patient and compile notes à la Wikipedia. That is exactly the vision of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CIO John Halamka, who encourages innovative thinking to overcome barriers such as privacy concerns. “As active patient engagement in health care grows, helping patients access data and connect with doctors in a simpler way will become essential” he believes.
Halamka spoke to JASON, an independent group made up of scientists who advise the government on science and technology matters, when they met to discuss their report on the use and transfer of health data. The report addresses the challenges that physicians face while adopting electronic health records. To address the biggest concern of privacy and security, Halamka suggests ‘social documentation’ products with services offered in the cloud, on mobile devices and some via new enterprise software.
Source: FierceHealthIT
Google Glass Gains Momentum in Healthcare
Google Glass plays a growing role in healthcare as developers incorporate the device into medical and personal health software. Sales of the device is expected to rise to 6.6 million units in 2016 from the half a million it sold in 2012. App development is crucial to the usefulness and performance of Google Glass and developers are accepting the challenge by streamlining existing software to work with the device.
Dr. Chrono, a consumer EHR app developer, is currently testing a beta version of its software, to rave reviews. Physicians can use the app, together with Google Glass, to take a picture that is automatically added to the patient’s chart or to record videos of consultations or surgeries that increases accuracy of procedures for billing. Such interconnectivity enables doctors to focus more on patients and frees up over 90% of time otherwise spent on administrative tasks.
Source: InformationWeek Healthcare
Medical Records at Your Fingertips
Online storage of medical records is on the rise thanks to improvements in technology and security. More Americans are starting to trust the Internet to store and protect their personal information, albeit slowly. Personal health records (PHR) are becoming more useful and easier to use, giving patients control of their own medical history.
Apple has announced plans to include a new health app in their Fall launch of iOS 8. The app will enable patients to easily transfer electronic health records (EHR) between doctors and share info with anyone they choose. The government’s BlueButton initiative already helps Medicare patients and veterans to access, download and transmit personal healthcare data. More than 40,000 physicians use Dr. Chrono to store records, send appointment reminders, and handle billing.
Patients keeping their own records may also lead to a reduction in the nation’s health care costs. A 2008 Harvard Medical School analysis found that if 80% of the US population could access and share medical records with any doctor, it could save up to $29 billion a year in medical expenses.
Source: The Boston Globe