Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) conference scholarships available through Kaiser Permanente!

Kaiser Permanente is generously offering scholarships for key staff at ClinicNET affiliated clinics to attend Institute for Healthcare Improvement conferences. In addition, they have provided ClinicNET with a limited amount of funding to support travel for eligible conference attendees. Click here for a list of upcoming IHI conferences. If you or another key staff member at your clinic is interested in attending one of the upcoming IHI conferences please email Brooke Powers at brooke.powers@clinicnet.org 

Author TR Reid Health Care presentation benefits Chaffee People's Clinic in Salida

T.R. Reid’s public presentation on Tuesday, Jan. 25, at 7 p.m. at the Salida SteamPlant Theater will examine why other countries have better, fairer, and cheaper health care than the USA. The event benefits the Chaffee People’s Clinic. Tickets for the presentation are $10 and are available at the door or in advance at the Salida and Buena Vista chambers of commerce, as well as at both CPC clinics (448 E. 1st St., Suite 148 in Salida and 114 Linderman in Buena Vista). The program is partially underwritten by The Colorado Trust, and discounts are available for those in need.

Reid, a former Washington Post correspondent and NPR contributor on international affairs, was the lead correspondent for the 2008 Frontline documentary Sick Around the World, which examined five other capitalist democracies, looking for lessons on health-care delivery. His books include Confucius Lives Next Door: What Living in the East Teaches Us About Living in the West and The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy. Reid set out on a global tour of hospitals and doctors' offices, all in the hopes of understanding how other industrialized nations provide affordable, effective universal health care. The result: his book The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. Copies will be on sale at the presentation.

Chaffee People's Clinic is a community-funded safety net clinic that provides primary health care for the uninsured in Chaffee County. In addition to volunteer support, the clinic relies on financial support from foundation and corporate grants, patient revenue, public grants, private contributions, donated services and fundraising events. For more information, contact Cara Russell at the Chaffee People’s Clinic, 719-530-2596.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Colorado HealthStory

Colorado HealthStory, a new collaborative project of ClinicNET, Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved and Colorado Rural Health Center, is modeled after the award winning public radio program, StoryCorps. Funded by The Colorado Trust and The Colorado Health Foundation Colorado HealthStory will create an appreciation of our shared experiences of health, one conversation at a time, throughout Colorado. We will be reaching out to you soon and plan to begin collecting stories in March. For more information please contact Brooke Powers at brooke.powers@clinicnet.org

FREE Kaiser Permanente webinars

These webinars are open to KP members and non-members.  

FREE CLINICS OF THE WESTERN REGION RETREAT

MARCH 16-19, 2011
BUDDHIST TZU CHI RETREAT CENTER
San Dimas, CA
Click here for more information.

Analyzing ACA

A new report funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation estimates the effects the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will have on how people get their health insurance, the number of people who will still have no insurance and America’s overall spending on health care. The report, written by Urban Institute researchers, uses the Institute’s Health Insurance Policy Simulation Model (HIPSM) to predict results as if ACA were fully implemented in 2010 and contrasts those outcomes with HIPSM’s estimates for how these factors would look in 2010 without reform.

Monday, January 3, 2011

ONC Issues Final Rule for Permanent Certification Program for Health Information Technology

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) today issued a final rule to establish the permanent certification program for health information technology. The permanent certification program provides new features that will enhance the certification of health information technology, including increasing the comprehensiveness, transparency, reliability, and efficiency of the current processes used for the certification of electronic health record (EHR) technology. Meaningful use of “Certified EHR Technology” is a core requirement for eligible health care providers who seek to qualify to receive incentive payments under the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record Incentive Programs as authorized by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

ICD-10 Implementation Strategy Resources

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released four podcasts and two video slideshow presentations from the August 3 National Provider Call on ICD-10 Implementation Strategies for Physicians.
  • Slideshow 1: Entire narrated presentation
  • Slideshow 2: Dr. Daniel Duvall's presentation on "Implementation Strategies for Physicians and Non-Physician Practitioners
  • Podcast 1: Welcome and Implementation Strategies for Physicians
  • Podcast 2: Overview and Presentations by CMS Subject Matter Experts
  • Podcast 3: Question and Answer Session
  • Podcast 4: Question and Answer Session Continued
The podcasts, video slideshows, and written transcript are now available on the CMS website.  The slideshows are in the "Related Links Outside CMS" section of the webpage; the podcasts are in the "Downloads" section at the bottom of the page.