Morning Headlines 1/3/13

Hospital groups unhappy with fiscal cliff legislation

Hospitals are left holding the bill as fiscal cliff legislation stops a 26.5 percent payment cut for Medicare physicians, but shifts nearly half of the cost to hospitals by further reducing hospital payments over the next 10 years.

Laptop Stolen From Gibson General Hospital

A laptop stolen from the home of a Gibson General Hospital employee during a burglary compromises the names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and clinical information of 29,000 patients.

Kyruus raises $11M to advance ‘big data’ health IT

Big data startup Kyruus raises $11 million in series B funding, bringing its total to $19.6 million in just its second year of operations. Kyruus uses EHR data and algorithms to figure out which doctors within a network are most efficient at specific procedures and why, hoping to drive better health care outcomes and lower costs. It communicates this information to physicians within the network when they are referring patients for consultations.

Separate may not be equal: A preliminary investigation of clinical correlates of electronic psychiatric record accessibility in academic medical centers

The International Journal of Medical Informatics publishes research findings comparing readmission rates of patients whose psychiatric records are made available to the clinical team via the EHR versus when the psychiatric records are treated as confidential. The study concludes that having a single, merged chart correlates with improved clinical care as measured by lower readmission rates for psychiatric patients.