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Norma Diaz and her husband, Joseph Garcia, have dedicated their careers to running a nonprofit health insurer that covers some of California’s neediest residents. For three decades, they have worked for a Medicaid managed-care plan, Community Health Group, serving nearly 300,000 poor and disabled patients in San Diego County under a state contract funded entirely by taxpayers. They’ve earned above-average ratings for patient care. And in the process, they’ve made millions of dollars. Together, Diaz and Garcia made $1.1 million in 2016 and received more than $5 million since 2012. Diaz’s compensation as CEO exceeded the pay of several peers...

<p>More than a decade ago the media were excited that Hillary Clinton and Newt Gingrich had formed an alliance about reforming health care. In 2005 Dana Milbank wrote in gushing terms in the Washington Post about a joint appearance.</p> <p>Of course, they were not alone. President Bush had already embraced the idea in his State of the Union speech to Congress. He envisioned a new era of “improved information technology to prevent medical error and needless costs.”</p>

Police set out to disprove Compton’s story about the fire by obtaining a search warrant to collect data from Compton’s pacemaker. WLWT5 reported that the cops wanted to know “Compton’s heart rate, pacer demand and cardiac rhythms before, during and after the fire.” On Friday, Jan. 27, the Journal-News reported that court documents stated: “A cardiologist who reviewed that data determined ‘it is highly improbable Mr. Compton would have been able to collect, pack and remove the number of items from the house, exit his bedroom window and carry numerous large and heavy items to the front of his residence...

http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2015/10/23/doctors-agree-obamas-electronic-medical-records-mandate-sucks-n2069809?bt_alias=eyJ1c2VySWQiOiJkNmM1NGMxZS1kY2NkLTRmYjktODdmZi02ZmIzMmFmZDEzYjgifQ%3D%3D Hey, who's up for a stiff dose of "See, I told you so?" For the past several years, medical professionals have warned that the federal electronic medical records mandate -- buried in the trillion-dollar Obama stimulus of 2009 -- would do more harm than good. Their diagnosis, unfortunately, is on the nose. The Quack-in-Chief peddled his tech-centric elixir as a cost-saving miracle. "This will cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests," he crowed at the time. In theory, of course, modernizing record-collection is a good idea, which many private health care providers...

Nearly everyone knows the dangers of identity theft, where someone steals your credit cards, bank information, or Social Security number to rip you off. But a new kind of crime is rising that could put you in even greater danger. It’s medical identity theft, and it’s on the rise in the U.S. According to report this month by the Medical Identity Fraud Alliance, which tracks such crimes, 2.3 million Americans were victimized by medical ID thieves in 2014 — with total damages adding up to $20 billion. That represents a 22 percent increase in the number of cases in just...

A Dallas hospital’s bizarre bungle of the first U.S. case of Ebola leaves me wondering: Is someone covering up for a crony billionaire Obama donor and her controversy-plagued, taxpayer-subsidized electronic medical records company? Last week, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital revealed in a statement that a procedural flaw in its online health records system led to potentially deadly miscommunication between nurses and doctors. The facility sent Ebola victim Thomas Duncan home despite showing signs of the disease—only to admit him with worse symptoms three days later. Hospital officials, who came forward “in the interest of transparency,” initially cited workflow and information-sharing...

A Dallas hospital's bizarre bungle of the first U.S. case of Ebola leaves me wondering: Is someone covering up for a crony billionaire Obama donor and her controversy-plagued, taxpayer-subsidized electronic medical records company? Last week, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital revealed in a statement that a procedural flaw in its online health records system led to potentially deadly miscommunication between nurses and doctors. The facility sent Ebola victim Thomas Duncan home despite showing signs of the disease -- only to admit him with worse symptoms three days later. Hospital officials, who came forward "in the interest of transparency," initially cited workflow...

Ms. Faulkner is worth two billion dollars. More than 40% of the U.S. population will have its medical information stored in an Epic digital medical record by 2013. Clients include many of the country’s top hospitals, including the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and Cedars-Sinai. Faulkner largely shuns the press and leads a modest lifestyle.” From Real Clear Politics: Who is Judy Faulkner? Chances are, you don’t know her — but her politically connected, taxpayer-subsidized electronic medical records company may very well know you. Top Obama donor and billionaire Faulkner is founder and CEO of Epic Systems, which will soon store...

Meet Judy Faulkner. She is the founder and CEO of Epic Systems Corporation in Wisconsin. She is also a member of the GAO Health Information Technology Policy Committee and an advisory board member of the Journal of Healthcare Information Management. She is also politically active. In 2008, Faulkner gave at least $110,000 to political organizations and candidates, including $57,000 to the Democratic National Committee and $2,300 to then-Senator Barack Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. After Obama’s election, Faulkner continued giving to the Democrats, giving at least $85,000 through the 2010 midterm election. In 2010, Faulkner gave $60,000...

A Dallas hospital's bizarre bungle of the first U.S. case of Ebola leaves me wondering: Is someone covering up for a crony billionaire Obama donor and her controversy-plagued, taxpayer-subsidized electronic medical records company? Last week, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital revealed in a statement that a procedural flaw in its online health records system led to potentially deadly miscommunication between nurses and doctors. The facility sent Ebola victim Thomas Duncan home despite showing signs of the disease -- only to admit him with worse symptoms three days later. Hospital officials, who came forward "in the interest of transparency," initially cited workflow...

COLUMBIA - Electronic medical records, or EMRs, have given some physicians joy and others nightmares. The federal government mandated all health care providers in the U.S. switch to EMRs by January 1, 2014. EMRs replaced the previous medical records systems done by hand on paper. The days of the 4-inch thick patient chart are over. "We knew it was coming, we knew we had to do it." said Tom Selva, chief medical officer at University Hospital. But University Hospital was always ahead of the game. It switched to an EMR provider 15 years ago when it started using Cerner, based...

In an address to the House on Wednesday, Alabama Representative Mo Brooks read aloud a letter sent to him by Dr. Marlin Gill of Decatur. The letter holds nothing back while detailing the excessive costs and regulations that Dr. Gill calls Obamacare’s “war against doctors.” Here is the full text of the letter, courtesy of Rep. Brooks’ office: Dear Congressman Brooks, As a practicing family physician, I plead for help against what I can best characterize as Washington’s war against doctors. The medical profession has never before remotely approached today’s stress, work hours, wasted costs, decreased efficiency, and declining ability...

<p>Dr. Nicholas DiNubile, a Philadelphia orthopedic surgeon, has a timely reminder for everyone encountering the federal health-care-exchange meltdown: “If you think signing up for Obamacare is a nightmare, ask your doctor how the EMR mandate is going.”</p> <p>Bingo.</p> <p>The White House finally acknowledged the spectacular public disaster of Obamacare’s Internet exchange infrastructure during Monday’s Rose Garden infomercial. But President ShamWow and his sales team are AWOL on the bureaucratic ravages of the federal electronic-medical-records mandate.</p>

(Reuters) - With the White House already reeling from three major controversies, some Republican lawmakers are zeroing in on what they perceive is another possible scandal tied to President Barack Obama's landmark health reform law just as it nears implementation. On top of the troubles the administration is facing over its handling of the attack on the Benghazi mission, the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups, and the Justice Department's seizure of Associated Press phone records, Republicans hope to target Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. They are questioning her soliciting of funds on behalf of a non-profit...

DR. WAX is a family physician based in Mullica Hill, N.J. He reports having no conflicts of interest related to this editorial.I consider myself a computer literate physician. In high school, I taught myself to program in BASIC on my Atari 800, which had a whopping 48K RAM. In college, I transitioned to the Apple Macintosh. At medicine morning rounds, I saw the Palm Pilot Pro and had to have one. I've been desktop and mobile computing ever since. I had spent the past 6 years investigating electronic health record (EHR) systems when, finally, on Black Friday 2009, I took...

Now that the federal government plans to spend $19 billion to spur the use of computerized patient records, the challenge of adopting the technology widely and wisely is becoming increasingly apparent. Two articles, to be published on Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, point to the formidable obstacles to achieving the policy goal of not only installing electronic health records, but also using them to improve care and curb costs. One article reports that only 9 percent of the nation’s hospitals have electronic health records, based on a survey of nearly 3,000 hospitals. The study, financed by the...

FOR 20 years, I practiced pediatric medicine with a “paper chart.” I would sit with my young patients and their families, chart in my lap, making eye contact and listening to their stories. I could take patients’ histories in the order they wanted to tell them or as I wanted to ask. I could draw pictures of birthmarks, rashes or injuries. I loved how patients could participate in their own charts — illustrating their cognitive development as they went from showing me how they could draw a line at age 2 and a circle at 3 to proudly writing their...

There are many reasons to object to this stinking pile from adding up debt that will increase inflation, taxes and interest rates when its effects are really felt down the road to repeating another Great Society version 2.0. The stimulus was supposed to be targeted, timely and temporary, but Porkulus isn't. Much of it will lead to permanent increases in the Federeal budget, especially in healthcare. Tom Dascle is gone, but his plan remains which is basically rationing with one size fits all.There’s Socialized Medicine Burried in Obama’s Trillion Dollar Debt PlanThat vision involves using large government bureaucracy and computer...

A government-sponsored survey of the use of computerized patient records by physicians points to two seemingly contradictory conclusions, and a health care system at odds with itself. The report, published online on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that doctors who use electronic health records say overwhelmingly that they have helped improve the quality and timeliness of care. Yet fewer than one in five of the nation’s physicians have started using such records. Bringing patient records into the computer age, experts say, is crucial to improving care, reducing errors and containing costs in the American health care...

A government contractor handling sensitive health information for 867,000 U.S. service members and their families acknowledged yesterday that some of its employees sent unencrypted data -- such as medical appointments, treatments and diagnoses -- across the Internet. Air Force investigators are probing the security breach at Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) of San Diego, an $8 billion defense contractor that holds sensitive government contracts, including for information security. The breach was discovered in May and involved data being processed by SAIC under nine health-care data contracts for the military. It was detected during routine scanning for questionable network traffic by...