Kathleen Sebelius

Medicare failed to follow some basic safeguards in switching its paper-based health record system to electronic health records, a key part of the current administration’s plan to save millions of dollars and provide better health care, the HHS Inspector General said in a report released Thursday.

In the report, the IG for Health and Human Services said Medicare did not put in place appropriate technology tools to make sure the information provided by hospitals and doctors about their EHR implementation was accurate. At stake were financial awards given to health providers if they adopted electronic records beginning in 2011. Keep reading →

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and US Chief Technology Officer Todd Park co-authored a White House blog this week about the high-points of the recent Health Datapalooza, touting a number of accomplishments. And certainly, they deserve credit for trying to unleash the forces of innovation on a bureaucracy as big as HHS.

However, looking more deeply into some of the high points mentioned in the blog, one discovers not everything is as self-evident or available to data users as it might appear. For example, they touted the following: Keep reading →

The White House Office of Management and Budget declared today that it had made genuine progress in cutting wasteful and improper payments to the tune of $17.6 billion in fiscal year 2011, with significant decreases in payment errors coming from Medicare, Medicaid, Pell Grants, and Food Stamps.

Combined with the improper payment cuts in 2010, administration officials said agencies avoided making over $20 billion in improper payments in the two years since President Obama issued an executive order initiating an aggressive campaign against wasteful payment errors.

OMB Director Jack Lew, in a press briefing today, attributed the progress to “an unparalleled commitment” by the White House, and the use of “forensic technologies” in rooting out sources of improper payments. Keep reading →