Government Accountability Office (GAO) news from FierceHealthIT

Some hospitals pay thousands of dollars more than others for big-ticket medical devices, according to Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigators, The Wall Street Journal reported. From Read more...

After investing nine years and $127 million, the Department of Veterans Affairs still doesn't have a modern outpatient scheduling system, and a second try at building one may fail unless the Read more...

A new report from the Government Accountability Office says that many federal, state and local health agencies are behind the curve when it comes to making sure their IT infrastructure can handle Read more...

Whether we're talking about Nadya Suleman (the "Octo Mom"), Britney Spears, or John Doe, patient privacy has been a big concern in recent years. Between security breaches and lack of HHS regulation, Read more...

To successfully fight infections, hospitals need to invest heavily in information technology, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. Health IT that helps remind clinical Read more...

HHS has not done enough to protect electronic medical data, a failure that has undermined consumer confidence in EMRs and possibly undercut vendors as well, according to the Government Accountability Read more...

Despite working on the project for 10 years, the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs are still far from being able to share health data freely. However, they have begun sharing some data, with Read more...

The reports detailing federal data security holes keep rolling in, but somehow, nobody seems to be Read more...

A new Government Accountability Office report has underscored a problem already quite familiar to FierceHealthIT readers--that pulling together care quality data is a heck of a problem. The recently-released GAO report reviewed eight hospitals' efforts to collect data on measures specified by CMS. (These are the data sets CMS requires hospitals to submit if they want Medicare payment increases.) The case studies concluded that while existing IT systems play a role, they …

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HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt unveiled a new initiative on Friday which would rely heavily on advanced health IT tools to individualize and improve patient care.
Leavitt's "Personalized Health Care" program will link genetic information with traditional health records on a large scale, in an effort to predict and thereby prevent the onset of many diseases. Leavitt has said that this effort will be one of his top priorities for the next two years.

Overall, HHS agencies like the …

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