A suspected cancer is bewildering and frightening—and for some patients, that suspicion is the beginning of an arduous journey through the health system. Proactive providers are adding navigators empowered to guide cancer patients, coordinating and expediting their care (and providing exactly the support that patients need).

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services plans to create a centralized database to help providers determine public health agencies and registries' readiness to receive patient data from certified EHRs.

Skaneateles Falls, NY, USA, February 17, 2014 -- Welch Allyn, a leading medical diagnostic device company that delivers pragmatic innovation at the point of care, today announced it has partnered with seca , global leader in medical measuring and weighing systems, to enable wireless automated interface between the Welch Allyn Connex® Vital Signs Monitor (VSM) and seca scales and measuring devices with the seca 360° system. The partnership allows Welch Allyn to offer for the first time a wirelessly connected weight and height patient data solution for both physician and hospital customers in low-acuity settings.

A new white paper from HEALTHeLINK, the western New York clinical information exchange, finds that a little effort to reduce unnecessary duplicative CT scans could have saved $1.3 million and radiation exposure to patients during one six-month period.

Over five and a half years, the approximately 350 hospitals that have participated in Premier Inc.’s QUEST collaborative beat national averages for costs and mortality through use of the QUEST methodology and integrated analytics, the Charlotte, N.C., company says. The savings so far have added up to $11.65 billion and 136,375 deaths prevented through evidence-based standardization of health care services, according to its figures.

Telepsychiatry professionals are working to make remote psychiatric care as accessible as other specialties, such as dermatology and stroke care.

Orlando, FL-- HIMSS Booth 4008 -- The Garage, a health information technology (IT) company re-imagining and building breakthrough innovations for hospitals and healthcare systems, today announced it will showcase AiR, one of the world’s first hands-free, fully integrated and interactive platforms designed to prevent surgical errors, at the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2014 Annual Conference and Exhibition from February 23-27, 2014 in Orlando, FL.

Five hospital systems that together represent 24 Michigan hospitals have joined or expanded their participation in Detroit-based Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s value-based hospital reimbursement model. Similar to the accountable care organization (ACO) idea of lowering costs while improving quality through better care coordination and a focus on outcomes, the new model requires the hospitals to “identify their provider partners in the community and work with them to develop and implement an infrastructure plan that includes an all-patient registry system that allows caregivers at the hospital and in the physician offices to measure an individual’s health performance against similar populations.”