Featured Report: American Telemedicine Association to roll out provider accreditation program

Med City News

American Telemedicine Association to roll out provider accreditation program
Dec,15,2014
by: Dan Verel 

The American Telemedicine Association will soon roll out its online accreditation program for direct to consumer healthcare consultations.More details will become available next week, the association said in a brief memo on its website. The program, approved by the board recently, will accredit U.S. healthcare providers who provide “real-time, online consultations directly to the patient,” and that also meet standards that “ensure safety, security and quality” of the service.The standards were developed by leading experts and are based on best practices and federal and state regulations for the growing telemedicine field, the association said. The accreditation will last for three years. Read More

HealthData Management

Patients Want Electronic Access to Medical Records
Dec,17,2014
by: Greg Goth

In its annual survey on the use of electronic health records, Xerox found many Americans are open to getting medical records online if given instruction on how to obtain access by their medical providers, but two-thirds have yet to do so. The survey was conducted online in September by Harris Poll among 2,017 U.S. adults and found a majority of Americans (64 percent) do not currently use online patient portals. However, more than half of those who don’t use portals (57 percent) say they would be much more interested and proactive in their personal healthcare if they had online access to their medical records. Read More

Modern Healthcare

Hospital-acquired conditions mean Medicare penalties for 700-plus hospitals
Dec,18,2014
by: Maureen McKinney
 More than 700 hospitals will see their total Medicare payments docked by 1% in fiscal 2015 as part of the first year of a federal penalty program aimed at reducing preventable harm and improving patient safety. The Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program, established by the healthcare reform law, penalizes hospitals that fall within the worst-performing quartile, based on measures of adverse events occurring during hospital stays, such as pressure ulcers, pulmonary embolisms and certain types of healthcare-associated conditions. According to CMS data released Thursday, 724 hospitals were in that bottom-scoring range for 2015. Those facilities will have their payments for all hospital discharges occurring after Oct. 1, 2014, reduced by 1%. (To view individual hospital HAC scores and whether they may be subject to the 1% penalty, visit the Modern Healthcare Value-Based Purchasing/HAC database.)  Read More

iHealthBeat

Consumers' Influence on Health IT in 2015
Dec,16,2014
by: Jane Sarasohn-Kahn

Health consumers and health care providers live in parallel universes when it comes to health IT, a smart CMIO friend of mine recently told me. 2015 will be a year when consumers, patients and caregivers pressure providers to converge toward greater convenience, access, transparency and quality using health IT. This health IT forecast for 2015 focuses on the forces that could advance and slow that convergence.

Consumer-directed care gets real as people get shopping. The phrase "consumer-directed health" came into use when employers' health insurance consultants began to design plans where employees bore more financial skin-in-the-game, in the form of higher copayments for services and prescription drugs. That was over a decade ago, and consumers didn't direct their care much as the copayments didn't feel like real money to them. In 2015, most workers who get health insurance at the workplace, as well as people buying health insurance on the exchanges, will face some level of high deductible, which has begun to hit covered people hard enough to feel like real money. This is forging consumer-like behavior in the form of shopping for services first and foremost on the basis of cost, which the first year of health insurance exchange shopping behavior demonstrated. Ananalysis by Healthsparq also found that certain types of medical services can motivate shopping, with expectant mothers being some of the most frequent health care shoppers according to Healthsparq's data. It added, "With labor and delivery varying between $9,485 and $25,254 in Oregon alone, shopping can make a huge difference."  Read More

Web Docs Network

Do you Know What Telehealth Can Do For You?

The Affordable Care Act know as Obamacare is here and there will be many changes on how you can get healthcare. One of those changes will be how you will get healthcare from your doctor. Now you can go online for a doctor's and get everything from a diagnosis to  your medication all without leaving your home. It's call tele-medicine but is it as good as an in person visit?  The answer is Yes!! Studies done by iHealthbeat in 2012 70% of patients received the same or better healthcare online as they did with an in person visit. But the surprising fact about this report is cost. The average cost of an in person doctor's visit range from $75.00 to $195.00 per visit. While an online visit cost $35.00 to $50.00 per visit. 

That being said I want to introduce you to WebDocs Network. At Web Docs Network we have a group of top Doctors that can see you 24/7 365 days a year. Where you can get a diagnosis  from our doctors that can be used anywhere even with your primary care doctor or your insurance company all it the cost of less that $35.00 a visit Only $19.95 per month . So if you want to lower your healthcare cost for you and your family visit our website at www.healthcareonline247.com and see how much Web Docs Network can save you.