Adding a telehealth component to standard health and social care is not a cost-effective approach for managing patients with long-term diseases such as congestive heart failure, according to results of a large, randomized controlled trial. The study was published online March 21 in BMJ.

Starting Jan. 1, 2014, all states must have fully operational health insurance exchanges in place.

Brendan Carr, MD, MA, MSHP, of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and colleagues reported that telemedical networks improved stroke care access for people in smaller communities in Oregon.

The benefit of preventing potentially harmful and expensive medication errors may exceed the cost of implementing and maintaining a barcode system that monitors inpatient administration of medication. Hospitals that already have existing infrastructure or are at higher risk of adverse drug-related events may reap even more savings, according to a recent study.

Implementing a real-time clinical decision support tool to identify PCI patients at high risk of bleeding events reduced complications and costs, according to a study presented March 10 at the American College of Cardiology (ACC) scientific session in San Francisco.

Hospitals that used an electronic discharge orders tool saw their 30-day heart failure (HF) readmission rates fall on average more than 2 percentage points lower than hospitals that did not apply the system. The tool also improved adherence to heart failure quality measures. The results are scheduled to be presented March 10 at the American College of Cardiology (ACC) scientific sessions in San Francisco.

We all know the saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.” Let’s take a look at the flip side, “Quality in, quality out.” And the phrase doesn’t have to refer to only data.

An EHR-derived model more accurately estimated cerebrovascular and cardiovascular mortality than did the Framingham Risk Score (FRS), highlighting the potential to use EHRs for clinical and policy purposes.