Alcohol-Related Illness: St. Patrick's Day Edition

St. Patrick’s Day marks the veneration of the island’s patron saint. In the dioceses of Ireland, it is both a solemnity and a holy day of obligation, and throughout Ireland it has become a day of parades, family feasts, and celebrations of Irish cultural heritage.
Read more

Asthma and EpiCenter

Now that we’ve sprung forward, health care professionals are readying themselves for the yearly increase in seasonal asthma visits. While spring allergens related to pollen do lead to increased ED visits for exacerbation of asthma symptoms, the highest spikes in asthma-related ED visits usually occur each year in the fall, beginning in September.
Read more

ICD-9 to ICD-10: An Upgrade

The year 2014 is bringing a lot of changes for the health care industry, including the ICD-10 compliance date. ICD is the classification used to code and classify diseases. The ICD has been revised periodically to incorporate changes in the medical field. To date, there have been 10 revisions of the ICD. On October 1st, 2014 all of the ICD-9 code sets that were previously used will be replaced by ICD-10 code sets. This transition is required for everyone covered by HIPAA.
Read more

Dr. Andrew Walsh to Present at 2014 CSTE Conference

It has just been announced that Dr. Andrew Walsh of HMS will be giving a poster presentation on his abstract, Visualizing Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Emergency Department Utilization during a Polar Vortex at the 2014 CSTE Annual Conference in Nashville, TN.
Read more

The HIE: Part 1

One of the great mysteries of the recent healthcare reform movement is why “HIE” has been used as the acronym for both Health Insurance Exchanges and Health Information Exchanges. As the Affordable Care Act health insurance exchanges continue to garner media coverage, the original HIEs—health information exchanges—continue to struggle.
Read more