Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report Highlights Recent Health IT News

Main Category: IT / Internet / E-mail
Also Included In: Public Health;  Rehabilitation
Article Date: 20 Mar 2008 - 5:00 PDT

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Summaries of several recent developments related to health care information technology appear below.

• Hospitals: The New York Times on Monday examined how some U.S. hospitals have begun to install "Internet systems, complete with dedicated shopping channels, to help patients pick up goods they will need for their recuperation." According to the Times, the "idea is that patients and visitors who are busy shopping and browsing the Web will be happier, less prone to bother nurses, and more likely to arm themselves with health care information that can help smooth the patient's recovery." The systems also can help hospitals attract more patients. However, only a "small fraction of the nation's roughly 6,000 community hospitals now have bedside Internet systems, perhaps because the costs can be considerable," the Times reports (Tedeschi, New York Times, 3/17).
  
  
• Physician services: The Washington Times on Tuesday profiled the medical practice of Howard Stark, a physician in Washington, D.C., who uses a secure Web site to provide some services to his almost 500 patients. Among other services, the Web site allows patients to make appointments, ask medical questions, retrieve laboratory test results and obtain prescription refills. According to Stark, the Web site reduces his paperwork and time on the telephone and allows him to schedule appointments for 30 minutes, about twice the time that most physicians schedule (Goldberg Goff, Washington Times, 3/18).
  
  
• Rural health care: The AP/Chicago Tribune on Wednesday profiled the University of New Mexico Center for Telehealth and Cybermedicine Research, which will use a $15.5 million grant from the Federal Communications Commission to design, build, operate and evaluate the Southwest Telehealth Access Grid, a broadband network that in large part will serve rural areas without such technology. The project will support systems and connections to more than 500 sites in New Mexico and Arizona -- as well as a number of Indian Health Service sites in Colorado, California, Nevada, Texas and Utah -- in an effort to provide physicians and patients in rural areas with improved access to health care services and information. The project will allow the sites to offer about 60 forms of telemedicine services (Major Holmes, AP/Chicago Tribune, 3/19).

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