Much federally funded medical research, disease prevention and public health initiatives will suffer if the congressional super committee fails to agree on a deficit-reduction package, according to a report from Kaiser Health News and the Washington Post. While much focus is on possible cuts to entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, health advocates are [...]

New military retirees who have enrolled in the Tricare Prime program after Oct. 1 will begin paying higher annual fees, Defense Department officials announced Friday. As of Saturday, individuals will now pay $260 per year, an increase of $30. Retirees with families will pay $520 per year, an increase of $60. These new fees only [...]

The National Institutes of Health will collaborate with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the  Food and Drug Administration to develop a chip capable of screening new drugs for toxic material before tested on people. The chips will be loaded with specific cell types and would be able to deliver readouts showing how different [...]

The most common cause of large health data breaches in 2010 was theft, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office for Civil Rights. The 11-page report covers breaches covers breaches of more than 500 individuals between Sept. 23, 2009 and Dec. 31, 2010, affecting entities covered by the Health Insurance Portability [...]

Traditional methods of mental healthcare, including face-to-face meetings with a psychologist, were given a high-tech facelift at a demonstration July 21. The National Center for Telehealth and Technology, or T2, presented a workshop at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, guiding providers on offering mental health services from a distance. Armed With Science reports T2’s facelift on mental [...]

HHS CIO Michael Carleton, Photo: CIO.gov Michael Carleton, chief information officer of the Department of Health and Human Services, will retire at the end of next month, FedScoop reports. As HHS CIO, a position he has had since 2007, Carleton also holds the title of deputy assistant secretary for information technology. In both roles, he [...]

After being introduced in the House last week, a streamlined approach to collect information on federal spending and post it online is now getting a debut in the Senate. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) introduced legislation Friday, which mirrors a bill introduced earlier in the week by Darrell Issa‘s (R-Calif.), creating a single, online storing-house for [...]

For the Health and Human Services Department’s digital-health-records czar, Farzad Mostashari, innovation is the name of the game. Mostashari, who was elevated to the top health IT position in the spring, spoke with GovernmentHealthIT.com as part of the Government Health IT Conference last week. “Electronic health records are creating more and more electronic information and [...]

The Department of Health and Human Services is set to roll out a new system next month aimed at rooting out waste, fraud and abuse at health agencies, using a new data-analytics approach known as predictive modeling. Predictive-modeling relies on risk-scoring tools to analyze claims as they come in, zeroing in on suspicious activity much [...]

Director of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari, the health agency’s point man for electronic health records — a key technology and policy push of the Obama administration. Mostashari joined the agency in 2009 and was elevated to ONC director earlier this spring when former director David Blumenthal announced he [...]