The Health IT Policy Committee voted to move forward recommendations regarding sending and receiving capabilities for behavioral health data during its June 10 meeting.

In an effort to improve care coordination, advocacy organizations are calling for reimbursement for telehealth and remote patient monitoring for accountable care organizations.

Eighty percent of serious medical errors involve miscommunication during patient handoffs, and nurses spend two hours per shift on care coordination and communication, said Nick Adams, president and co-founder of Care Thread, during a webinar by Beacon Partners.

National Health Service England and GovLab at New York University have joined forces to encourage the open use of data in healthcare settings.

Telemedicine can help physicians successfully diagnose eye conditions in patients with diabetes, according to a Veterans Health Administration study published in JAMA Ophthalmology.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of National Coordinator (ONC) has taken the brunt of criticism by health information technology (HIT) stakeholders, legislators and industry experts as to why, with millions in taxpayer dollars spent on incentives to encourage the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs), better HIT is still not saving the nation much money.

Simple low-cost changes can make a big difference in the overall cost of care is what New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, North Carolina, recently found when it crunched the number on its Lean management effort in fall prevention. However, it also found that most of those savings went to the government, insurers and patients, and not the hospital.

A key quality measure for many payment systems is a hospital’s rate of preventable readmissions, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) new Re-Engineered Discharge (RED) Toolkit aims to help institutions improve their numbers.