Ix, Medicaid and HIT

The Center for Children and Families at the Georgetown Health Policy Institute has just released a series of issue briefs on “Strengthening Medicaid.” I authored one of these papers, “Health Information Technology: Innovative Applications for Medicaid,” which discusses strategies that states can use to improve the quality and efficiency of Medicaid programs. The paper addresses [...]

Ix is in the House: Congressman Kennedy Re-Introduces PHR Legislation

Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) re-introduced the “Personalized Health Information Act” at a Capitol Hill briefing today to incentivize adoption of personal health records (for details of the precursor PHR legislation from the last Congress, see my January 3 post: Patient-Centered Health Information Technology in the New Congress). Some of the observations about the issues that most struck [...]

Patient-Centered Health Information Technology in the New Congress

With the 110th Congress about to get underway, it’s exciting to think about the possibilities for patient-centered health information technology (HIT) legislation.  Last fall, Congressman Patrick Kennedy introduced a bill (HR 6289) that would create incentives for using personal health records (PHRs). Unlike much of the HIT legislation out there, it really focuses on consumer’s personalized [...]

Changing the World…and then What?

For those of us who spend our professional lives trying to figure out how to make the world a better place, our immediate measures of success can sometimes block our view of the future. More specifically, the focus on short-term objectives often hinders our ability to plan for what might await us if we actually [...]