A key provision in 2009's economic stimulus legislation propelled health information technology (IT) into national health care policy debates.
Deliberations over health care’s future continue to be divisive. The U.S. Senate “super committee”—deadlocked over deficits linked largely to health care spending—has thrown in the towel. The Affordable Care Act is headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Robert (Rob) Reid, MD, PhD, answers questions about his new role as Group Health’s first-ever associate medical director of health services research & knowledge translation.
Online messaging can deliver organized follow-up care for depression effectively and efficiently, according to a randomized controlled trial of 208 Group Health patients that the Journal of General Internal Medicine e-published March 2011.
“Natural language processing” (NLP) is a computing function Group Health Research Institute is testing and using to target mentions of specific words and phrases in this free text by parsing human-language sentence structure. As the accuracy of NLP is perfected, this technology can supplement skilled chart abstraction and may provide faster access to larger, richer bodies of data.
Changing policy could make screening for breast cancer more accurate
More women are surviving longer after having early-stage breast cancer, but they are at risk of developing breast cancer again: a recurrence or a new cancer, in either breast. Annual screening (a.k.a. “surveillance”) mammography has long been standard for these women, but only scant evidence on screening outcomes supported this practice. In the February 23, 2011 Journal of the American Medical Association, the most comprehensive relevant study to date shows yearly mammograms do detect second breast cancers early.
Land Acknowledgment
Our Seattle offices sit on the occupied land of the Duwamish and by the shared waters of the Coast Salish people, who have been here thousands of years and remain. Learn about practicing land acknowledgment.