For the third year running, the supply-chain standards organization GS1 Healthcare-US held a small roundtable discussion dinner for media, healthcare supply-chain professionals and suppliers during the annual Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management conference. This year's event took place on the second evening of AHRMM's four-day conference, held Aug. 1-4 in Denver.In the interest of full disclosure, this reporter had salmon and mashed potatoes for dinner and flourless chocolate cake for dessert.
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On any sunny late afternoon, residents of the beautiful Ojai Valley of Southern California simply pause and look up to enjoy the fleeting and renowned “Pink Moment” when the setting sun turns the arid Topa Topa Bluffs above the valley to a dusty rose.Howard Landa knew it was akin to an epochal moment in U.S. healthcare history when he opened the 19th Physician-Computer Connection Symposium last month.The final rules on the meaningful use of electronic health-records systems had been released by the CMS just the day before. The rules spell out what will be required of...
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Everyone knows what unicorns look like. You know, unicorns: well-brushed manes, thick cords of muscle, magical horns on their forehead. No one has ever seen a real one in flesh and blood, yet somehow everyone knows how it would appear if they did. The same is true of accountable care organizations.
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This year's meeting of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, held in New Orleans, opened with a bang as two of the patient safety movement's most visible advocates took the stage.
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William H. Gates Sr. was the first of two keynote speakers at this year's annual meeting of the American Health Lawyers Association, held June 27-30 in Seattle. Gates, otherwise known as Bill Gates' dad, had a long career as a lawyer himself and now works on directing his son's vast fortune toward global health initiatives as co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But let's be honest. All those lawyers, more than 1,300 of them, were there to hear about and talk about healthcare reform, and the other keynote speaker, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), took care of that.
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Sister Carol Keehan may be one of the most controversial figures in Catholic healthcare right now, but if loud applause for her appearances in Denver this month is any indication, the leaders of U.S. hospitals are fully standing behind her. At the Catholic Health Association's annual meeting, the CHA president received the support of hospital leaders and another key constituency: “I especially want to thank Sister Carol Keehan for her work in advancing this important legislation,” President Barack Obama said in a taped video announcement
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Here are a few random thoughts from the Healthcare Financial Management Association's Annual National Institute earlier this week in Las Vegas. Now, it's time to retire the phrase “burning platform” from the speaking circuit as a clever way to describe a crisis that's too late to be avoided.
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Many physicians feeling put upon by government and insurance companies left Chicago feeling energized after the American Medical Association's 159th annual House of Delegates meeting, held June 12-16.
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Hospitals can expect the squeeze that began with the economic downturn to continue as new health insurance subsidies and regulation expand access to medical care under health reform and pressure to curb costs grows, healthcare financial insiders told board members and CEOs at the Governance Institute's yearly meeting for board and executive leadership.
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The patient-safety movement is rife with often-used analogies for the challenges its experts face and what some believe to be the best solutions. At any given time, we're told that patient-safety programs are just like the nuclear power industry, Swiss cheese, Federal Express, or, most popularly, the aviation industry. And the National Patient Safety Foundation's 12th annual Patient Safety Congress was no exception.
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Healthcare reform is in the statute books now, removing a tremendous amount of uncertainty from the healthcare services industry, and debt markets, while nowhere near the frothy days of 2005 to 2007, have rebounded, according to the panelists at the Nashville Health Care Council's Financing the Deal luncheon.
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Lucian Leape—commonly regarded as one of the fathers of today's patient-safety movement—says healthcare in America is poised for a paradigm shift equal in magnitude to the acceptance of germ theory.
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As opposed to politics as usual, it was: Politics, as usual. Although the NCAA basketball tournament offered a respite, there was no escape from healthcare politics at the American Medical Group Association's annual meeting in New Orleans, which was held March 18-20 at the New Orleans Marriott just on the edge of the city's famed French Quarter nonstop party district.
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At the fifth annual national Pay for Performance Summit, held in San Francisco this month, the phrase “payment reform” was tacked onto the conference title, as in “the leading national forum on pay for performance and payment reform.”
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All the talk of power struggles and lack of compromise among federal lawmakers didn't seem to faze behavioral healthcare providers attending the National Association of Psychiatric Health Systems annual meeting in Washington this week.
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