Everyone who follows the news is aware of the now-notorious Heartbleed bug, which is thought to have affected up to two-thirds of all websites. Users received notices from websites like Gmail and Pinterest advising them to change their passwords, and an estimated 39% of us actually took the step of updating our login credentials. But […]
Although they make up only a small portion of the overall requirements, the Public Health-related set of Meaningful Use requirements has still managed to generate a considerable amount of debate and confusion. One of the primary sources of this confusion relates to ambulatory care providers and the submission of syndromic surveillance data.
An Ebola outbreak has been brewing in West Africa since February. According to the CDC, on April 29, 2014, Guinea’s Ministry of Health reported 221 suspected and confirmed cases of Ebola hemorrhagic fever, including 146 deaths. Of these suspected cases, 126 have been laboratory confirmed as Ebola. At the time of writing, there were 25 […]
Childhood diseases can be a frightening topic, especially when we are seeing the re-emergence of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles and whooping-cough. There have been at least 129 measles cases from 13 states that have been reported in the U.S. in 2014, the highest number since 1996, according to the CDC. In recent years, many […]
For 2013, healthcare spending in the United States was estimated at about $3 trillion and is projected to grow to $5 trillion by 2020. Those numbers are mind-bogglingly large. By comparison, the annual U.S. GDP was about $16 trillion in 2013. Healthcare represents about 18% of the total. Only China, Japan, and Germany have a […]
The Affordable Care Act has brought a number of changes to the American healthcare landscape, the most well-known of which is the health insurance mandate, the result of which will theoretically increase the number of Americans with health insurance coverage. Here at Health Monitoring Systems, we are closely monitoring the effects of the ACA on […]
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.
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.
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, […]
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.