News

IPRO's Renato Estrella, MSHA RHIA, Director, Health Information Management, Federal/Medicare Health Care Assessment, was installed as President of the New York Health Information Management Association, Inc. (NYHIMA) for 2008-09 during the association's awards banquet this summer, at the Saratoga Hilton Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York.

An overwhelming majority of Americans believe the U.S. health care system should be changed fundamentally or rebuilt entirely, according to a survey of 1,004 adults conducted by Harris Interactive and released in August by the Commonwealth Fund.

Hospital mortality data recently made available by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services include for the first time each institution's risk-standardized mortality rate, an estimate of the certainty of that rate and the number of cases included in the computations.

IPRO is one of only two Medicare-funded Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs) in the nation to win all competitive procurements for special three-year funding to support innovative quality improvement activities at the local level.

IPRO, one of the nation's leading quality improvement and evaluation organizations, has created a Limited Liability Company (LLC) that will assume all of IPRO's compliance audit oversight and consulting contracts with managed care organizations (MCOs). The new entity, Logiqual (www.logiqual.com), is now officially incorporated in New York State.

Efforts by a Staten Island nursing home to dramatically improve its performance on pain management have been recognized in an article by the managing editor of the New York/New Jersey division of Nursing Spectrum.

New York Governor David A. Paterson and legislative leaders in Albany have reached agreement on a series of reforms aimed at improving access to information on disciplinary actions involving physicians, physician assistants and specialist assistants.

IPRO has received a grant through Google's AdWords program. The donated advertising on Google will link users with IPRO's consumer-directed sites.

The New York State Health Accountability Foundation, a partnership between IPRO and the New York Business Group on Health, plans to release its 10th annual Health Care Report Card this fall.