Politico’s “The Agenda” section has published a special report on Medicare, now and in the future, and how it might fare in the current political climate. Baby boomers are weighing the system to the breaking point, and this series looks at the current threats and at the ideas being proposed to rescue the social welfare program for seniors. Continue reading
Photo: Dan Simpson via Flickr
Women and people of color are experiencing stubborn pay gaps in one of the more lucrative and in-demand fields of health care – health IT.
While the movement towards equal pay for equal work continues to grow, there is little data on compensation disparities in health IT, in part because the field is so new. Continue reading
You might be receiving a lot more PR pitches about artificial intelligence (AI) in your inbox these days. Gideon Gil, managing editor of Stat, has. Gil moderated a panel at Health Journalism 2018 on AI that aimed to help reporters and editors distinguish between hype and reality.
Briefly, AI is an artificial system that can perceive its environment and takes independent action to produce a result. AI products typically demonstrate behaviors associated with human intelligence such as learning, planning, movement and problem solving. Continue reading
Photo: Pia Christensen/AHCJMay Wang, chief technology officer at cybersecurity firm Zingbox, said that connected medical devices often are not used efficiently.
It’s only a matter of time before a patient is harmed through medical device hacking, and journalists have many resources to probe whether their local health providers are able to prevent or respond to such an event, said a panel of experts at Health Journalism 2018 in Phoenix.
To date, there are no documented cases of patients harmed by medical device hacking, said panel moderator and independent journalist Mark Taylor. But reporters should be asking their local hospitals about this specific cybersecurity threat. Continue reading
Photo: Roy Blumenthal via Flickr
The Journal of the American Medical Association not long ago published an online editorial by two physicians at NewYork-Presbyterian that called for the creation of a new medical specialty focused on virtual care.
Others expanded on this idea in a blog post last month on the Health Affairs website, calling for a “virtualist movement“ that involves not just physician specialists but whole care teams devoted to virtual care. This virtual team would include nurses, pharmacists, medical social workers, psychologists, nutritionists and physical therapists. Continue reading
Arthur Allen’s piece, The ‘Frequent Flier’ Program That Grounded a Hospital’s Soaring Costs, ran recently as part of Politico’s What Works series. Allen leveraged his IT expertise to report out a broader piece on health information technology efforts in Texas.
Like many journalists in Washington, D.C., Arthur Allen knows his jargon.
As the editor for Politico’s eHealth, Allen is all too familiar with the trappings of Congress and the resulting litany of regulations and rules that follow any major health-related legislation, including a 2009 bill that aimed to encourage doctors and hospitals to invest in information technology. Continue reading