Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
From Cost Of Visit To Staff Compassion, Yelp Hospital Ratings Go Beyond 'Gold Standard' Survey
The Washington Post: What Yelp Can Tell You About A Hospital That Official Ratings Can’t
If you've ever taken the time to give Yelp your two cents about a hospital, you'll be happy to know that someone's listening and that they've deemed the crowdsourced information not only useful — but unique. In what is believed to be the first large-scale analysis of such data, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania looked at 17,000 Yelp reviews of 1,352 hospitals from consumers. They found that the online information provides a broader sense of a facility than the current gold standard — a U.S. government survey that costs millions of dollars to develop and implement each year. (Cha, 4/5)
The Associated Press: Hackers Broke Into Hospitals Despite Software Flaw Warnings
The hackers who seriously disrupted operations at a large hospital chain recently and held some data hostage broke into a computer server left vulnerable despite urgent public warnings since at least 2007 that it needed to be fixed with a simple update, The Associated Press has learned. The hackers exploited design flaws that had persisted on the MedStar Health Inc. network, according to a person familiar with the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss the findings publicly. (Abdollah, 4/6)
The Sacramento Bee: California Hospital Hacks Reveal Weak Links In Health Cybersecurity
Cybercriminals have targeted hospitals with growing frequency in recent years, identifying the millions of recently digitized patient files as a treasure trove of unguarded information. Hospitals have historically been vulnerable to security breaches due to their reliance on expensive, aging medical equipment, their inability to halt patient care to perform time-consuming software updates, and a workflow that depends on the constant input and accessing of data on different devices. Those complications, combined with the high black market value of medical records, makes such facilities prime targets for a growing number of sophisticated criminals. (Caiola, 4/5)
And in more health IT news —
The Wall Street Journal: National Health IT Coordinator Says Technology Can Help Unblock Patient Data Access
The cloud era and big data are poised to give consumers access to their medical records like never before – whenever and wherever they need it, says Karen DeSalvo, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s acting assistant secretary and the national coordinator for health information technology. She told Wall Street Journal reporters and editors that she wants to refocus health data around people, not records. Over time, that could help overcome the for-profit “blocking” of patient data. (Loten, 4/5)
The Charlotte Observer: Blue Cross Executive Resigns Amid Technology Fiasco
Blue Cross and Blue Shield chief operating officer Alan Hughes has abruptly resigned from the state’s largest health insurance company, an apparent casualty of an ongoing technology fiasco that has prevented thousands of Blue Cross customers from enrolling and triggered an investigation by the N.C. Department of Insurance. Blue Cross, the state’s largest health insurer, announced Hughes’ resignation Tuesday. The company said Hughes was replaced by Gerald Petkau, the company’s previous chief financial officer. Petkau will oversee the company’s customer service, claims processing, project management and IT functions. (Murawski, 4/5)
