Telestroke is a cost-effective strategy for treating ischemic stroke patients in rural hospitals that lack stroke expertise, according to a study published Sept. 14 in Neurology. While there are significant upfront costs in developing the two-way audiovisual technology, the lifetime savings of improved stroke care outweigh the initial costs, the study found.

A telehealth tool may help manage care and cut expenses in the treatment for chronically ill Medicare beneficiaries, according to a recent study that looked at two clinics in the Northwest that were exposed to the intervention.

  Thoracic-cardiovascular surgeons are more than twice as likely to face a malpractice claim annually than physicians as a whole, according to a study in the Aug. 18 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. For cardiologists, the likelihood was slightly higher than the 7.4 percent all-physician annual figure.

Healthcare providers are going to have to learn how to play nicely with each other.  As Medicare cuts continue, health systems, hospitals and individual physician practices are going to have to learn to share patient care, in order to qualify for the shared payment model that will likely emerge soon.

Despite challenges in data transmission, continued use of EHRs to track population health is important in demonstrating the value of health IT adoption and improving the quality of care in the primary care setting, based on a commentary published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, posted online Aug. 19.

As hospitals attempt to realign both costs and care, they also must adopt physician leaders who will pave the way for the future of healthcare reform and help the hospital and staff thrive during the cultural change. Developing mentorship programs can help facilitate this. However, a recent survey by the National Center for Healthcare Leadership (NCHL) has shown that these types of initiatives may be more feasible in larger hospitals and healthcare systems.

Applying a collaborative filtering methodology to medication reconciliation lists can better predict drugs that patients could take, but may miss complete patient medication lists which can negatively affect patient outcomes, researchers found.

Implementing health IT in the community setting is a national priority designed to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of healthcare. However, community-based organizations who are implementing health IT often lack the expertise to effectively evaluate the systems, according to a perspective published Aug. 1 in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.