Editor’s note: Article updated December 14, 2011, to account for House passing the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2011.
Provider associations have decried a provision within the GOP’s latest spending bill, introduced last Friday and passed by the House on Wednesday, which would phase-down federal reimbursement for $10.6 billion worth of bad debt owed to hospitals and skilled nursing facilities over three years.
Last Wednesday the nurse aide students began two days of clinicals. Their instructor and the floor aides supervise the students, who are assigned residents, while the regular floor aides assist and care for those with special needs.
The number of young people becoming registered nurses has grown sharply since 2002 despite concerns of a looming nursing shortage in the United States, according to researchers from the RAND Corporation, Vanderbilt University and Dartmouth College.
People aged 23 to 26—primarily women—who became registered nurses increased by 62 percent from 2002 to 2009, approaching numbers not seen since the mid-1980s, researchers said.
By now, many of you are probably thinking, “What exactly is Harvey on about? It sounds like he’s grumbling about outsourcing gone wrong. How bad could it be?” Well, let me tell you… I mentioned earlier that I’ve spent quite a bit of time lately looking at “facts on...
Yesterday I made the observation that there are healthcare organizations around the country who have abdicated their duty to manage their IT operations responsibly. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between those who are doing legitimate outsourcing and those...
They say that Robert Johnson wasn’t much of a guitar player. Oh, he wanted to play. But if there was any talent there, it was well hidden. His friend and mentor, fellow blues man Son House, tells about how Robert would be in the next room, trying to coax the blues out...
During the CHIME reception at HIMSS in April, I spotted our friend Anthony holding court at a table surrounded by the rich and powerful. (Actually it was a bunch of CIOs and consultants.) Being the shy and retiring guy that I am, I pulled up a chair and sat in the...
I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, and I’ve decided that the key to being a successful quarterback in the NFL is the ability to quickly and accurately read defenses. So, I’m going to make a concerted effort to teach my grandson how to read NFL defenses. He has a...
The Washington Post has published a couple of articles within the last few days shining a spotlight on the obvious influence that HIMSS exercised in drafting the HITECH Act and the HIT components of ARRA. The reports drew attention to the web of connections between...
I confess that I’m coming down with a serious case of Meaningful Use Fatigue. Since the ARRA included that phrase as a condition for receiving EMR incentive payments, the industry has been parsing those two words like a French literary deconstructionist. Google will...
You may have seen the breathless news reports about Kaiser Permanente’s disciplining of twenty-three employees for unauthorized access to Nadya Suleman’s electronic records. These violations of policy and ethics are being described as “security breaches” that threaten...
I wrote earlier in admiration of President Obama’s choice of Tom Daschle as his designee to fill the top job at HHS. I make no bones of the fact that I was disappointed by the circumstances that resulted in his withdrawal. And, I admit to some conflicted feelings. On...
