Tag: MEDICARE

Back in January, President Obama outlined a five-year plan in which all of the country's medical records would be digitized. By streamlining and introducing electronic standards to health data, mistakes like duplicate tests could be avoided. But, considering that only "20 percent of doctors and 10 percent of hospitals use even basic electronic health records," -- according to Kathleen Sebelius, ...

In an effort to save money and gain support for health care reform, President Barack Obama is calling in the nerds. According to an Associated Press report, Obama said Tuesday that he's hiring a group of private "bounty hunters" to crack down on health care fraud, particularly those cases pertaining to Medicare and Medicaid. They won't be armed with mullets and pepper spray like TV badass Dog, ...

Doctors are being offered an incentive by Medicare to start ditching old paper prescriptions in favor of electronic ones. The expectation is that e-prescriptions will reduce costs and minimize mistakes due to doctors' notoriously terrible hand writing. Starting January 1st of 2009, doctors will start receiving bonuses for using e-prescriptions, which are accepted by 80-percent of pharmacies in ...