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URAC announces that a distinguished panel of judges has selected 19 finalists for its 2012 Awards for Best Practices in Health Care Consumer Empowerment and Protection. The competition drew entries from across the nation. The finalists will be honored during URAC's 2012 Quality Summit, Oct. 9-11 in San Francisco. The awards honor programs in two areas: consumer decision-making and consumer health improvement."In a time of historic change in the health care industry, the Best Practices Awards provide an ...

VitalHealth Software, a global provider of web-based solutions for health management established by Mayo Clinic and the Noaber Foundation, announce that Blair Butterfield has joined the company as president of its North American division. With over 20 years of management experience in new market and business development, strategic marketing, product strategy and government initiatives related to healthcare information technology, Butterfield will expand the company infrastructure and lead all operations ...

The Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center (BUHMC) Board of Trustees announce hiring of crisis management and restructuring professionals from the nationally recognized firm of Grant Thornton LLP to guide BUHMC through a major restructuring effort and help return the institution to fiscal solvency."Brookdale is facing one of the most serious tests in its history, and we must adapt to meet the healthcare and financial challenges of the 21st Century," says BUHMC Chairman Dr. Alvin I. Kahn. "The ...

Consumers pay as much as 31 percent more for insurance because insurance companies have to comply with regulations from multiple states instead of just a single regulator, according to new research by a University of Iowa insurance expert.Ty Leverty, a professor of finance in the Tippie College of Business, says expenses associated with meeting regulations in every state in which a company does business drive up compliance costs by 26 percent when compared to companies that are regulated by only one ...

Medline Industries Inc., one of the nation's largest privately held manufacturer and distributor of health care supplies, announces the winners of its 2011 Distribution Supplier Recognition Awards. These annual awards were given to nine Medline supply partners who demonstrated outstanding performance in sales and operations and collaborated with Medline to provide exceptional value and service to the thousands of leading health care facilities who chose Medline for their medical and surgical supplies.The ...

Summit Healthcare, a healthcare system integration provider, has expanded its technology offering with Southwest Medical Center to meet their needs for bi-directional integration with their physician offices. Southwest Medical Center will be implementing the Summit Provider Exchange solution this spring. The Kansas-based regional acute care facility has been live with the Summit Express Connect interface engine technology since 2010 to control their hospital integration needs with third-party ...

The 2008 decision by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to cease additional reimbursement to hospitals for certain healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) has led to enhanced focus on infection prevention and changes in practice by front-line staff, according to a national survey of infection preventionists published in the May issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).A ...

MEDSEEK, a leading provider of online strategic patient engagement and analytics solutions for healthcare organizations, announced today that Silver Lake Sumeru, Essex Woodlands and MEDSEEK management have signed a definitive agreement to acquire the Company. MEDSEEK's software platform helps healthcare organizations attract and retain patients and improves patient experience and care through enhanced patient-doctor communication and information accessibility."We are thrilled to partner with Silver Lake ...

The design-build team of McCarthy Building Companies Inc. and HDR Architecture Inc. have begun construction of the new $150 million Martin Luther King, Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center in Los Angeles. The new 132,550-square-foot facility was designed to meet LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold standards.The four-story medical facility, which broke ground on Jan. 25, will house five operating rooms, dentistry, oncology and physical and occupational therapy services. ...

Consult A Doctor, an innovator of cloud-based telemedicine services and platform solutions, announcs it is one of only five finalists amongst thousands of applicants to participate in the IBM SmartCamp Kickstart Miami event. SmartCamp Kickstart is a part of the IBM Global Entrepreneur initiative, an exclusive event aimed at identifying early-stage entrepreneurs who are developing healthcare business solutions that align with the "IBM Smarter Healthcare" vision and their broader goal to build a smarter ...

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) has submitted comments to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius regarding a notice of proposed rulemaking to postpone the compliance date for International Classification of Diseases, 10th Edition diagnosis and procedure codes (ICD-10) to Oct. 1, 2014.In its comments, CHIME urged HHS to remain committed to ICD-10, while calling the one year delay an appropriate "middle ground" for all stakeholders."A longer delay would ...

McKesson has released the 2012 update of its InterQual® clinical criteria and software, solutions that help payers and providers determine the appropriate use of healthcare resources and improve the quality of care. Enhancements this year include the extension of a "condition-specific" model to the full InterQual Acute Care suite, driving the further efficiency and effectiveness of care management processes, as well as a comprehensive set of criteria for the use of oncology drugs and biologics, in ...

M*Modal, a provider of clinical documentation services and Speech Understanding™ solutions, announces the launch of M*Modal Fluency™, a new family of clinical solutions built on the company's cloud-based healthcare Speech Understanding platform. The company also introduces M*Modal Fluency Direct™, which speech-enables EHRs and other clinical systems on any workstation, anywhere in the enterprise to assist care providers from every medical specialty in the creation of high-quality ...

Siemens Healthcare announces that several large healthcare enterprises and specialty hospitals are turning to Siemens for next-generation enterprise revenue cycle management. With Soarian® enterprise revenue cycle management, Siemens addresses organizational revenue cycle needs by helping enterprises create a unified patient database and billing solution for physician practices and hospitals. Healthcare organizations can now turn to Soarian to reduce the reliance on third-party, bolt-on solutions, ...

The National Quality Forum (NQF) Board of Directors has endorsed two measures that address all-cause unplanned readmissions in hospitals - an area of healthcare targeted for improvement given national imperatives to make healthcare safer, more affordable, and keep people healthy."Almost one in five Medicare beneficiaries that leave a hospital end up being readmitted within 30 days," says Janet Corrigan, PhD, MBA, president and CEO of NQF. "Those readmissions cost about $15 billion annually, and many have ...