A commentary on the National Quality Measures Clearinghouse website titled Pay for Performance in U.K. General PracticeThe Ambiguous Impact of the Quality and Outcomes Framework, offers a mixed review of the pay-for-performance (P4P) initiatives of the National Health Services' Quality and Outcomes Framework.

Healthcare quality is improving, but access is still uneven and disparities exist, especially for minority and low-income groups, according to the 2010 National Healthcare Quality Report and National Healthcare Disparities Report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

Nuance Communications highlighted Nuance Healthcare Development Platform, a cloud-based platform, at HIMSS11 and emphasized its partnership with 3M.

Multiple factors stand to shake up health care organizations' leadership structures in the coming years, says Will Powley, senior consulting leader with GE Healthcare's Performance Solutions group: economic recovery, health care reform, and, perhaps with the most impact, the impending retirement of the Baby Boomer generation. Combined, these three

By early 2007, Birmingham, Alabama-based Baptist Health System (BHS) was facing significant systemic problems with its staff and management—problems that were creating tough-to-surmount financial repercussions. Alan Bradford, chief human resource officer at BHS, clearly recalls the difficulties the organization was facing: "The momentum of the

ORLANDO, Fla.--Facility-wide physician education, along with the implementation of a computerized provider order entry (CPOE) system, can result in improved standardization and a reduction of blood transfusions, said medical oncologist C. Eric Hartz, MD, CMIO at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. Hartz described the project and its results at his facility during a Feb. 21 presentation at HIMSS11.

ORLANDO, FLA. -- Much to my amazement, standards and interoperability [for health IT] have occurred, said Christopher G. Chute, MD, DrPH, of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., during an educational session Feb. 20 at the Physicians IT Symposium at HIMSS.

U.S. healthcare employment accounted for 10.7 percent of total employment in January, an increase of more than one percentage point since 2007, according to a recent report from Altarum Institute.