Health Net creates new quality office

Health Net (Los Angeles) said it has consolidated all of its quality initiatives under a new enterprise-wide quality office led by Ray Nan Berry, the company's newly appointed chief quality officer.

Under Berry's leadership, the office will develop an enterprise-wide, process-based system of quality management with clear accountability and performance metrics. Using a framework based on national and international standards of excellence, the company will work to ensure that it exceeds performance standards and customer and regulatory requirements, while achieving well-defined program objectives to serve customers.

Health Net is a publicly traded managed healthcare company.

Standard Register completes Rx history capture

Standard Register (Dayton, Ohio), a provider of document workflow and automation services, said that its new Rx History Capture solution has completed certification with SureScripts-RxHub.

Designed to help hospitals enhance patient safety and reduce adverse drug events, Rx History Capture gathers prescription data from pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and retail pharmacies via the SureScripts-RxHub network and combines it with data from a hospital's information systems to provide authorized clinicians with a valuable tool for validating patient medication histories.

With consent from the patient, Rx History Captures uses the SureScripts-RxHub network to query pharmacy benefit managers and retail pharmacies for patient medication history information as part of the admission process or on demand in an inpatient, outpatient or emergency setting. Rx History Capture can combine this real-time information with data from the patient's last visit to generate an "as-filled" list of medications which can be made available electronically to authorized staff or output to the hospital's medication history or reconciliation form.

Millstone Medical opens second facility

Millstone Medical Outsourcing (Fall River, Massachusetts) reported the opening of a second operating facility in Fall River. The company acquired the new 30,000-square-foot facility to provide additional space and capacity for advanced inspection and clean room services. The company said it will continue to operate its existing Fall River facility for the foreseeable future.

In addition to the two Fall River locations, Millstone also offers loaner kit processing and distribution services through a facility in Memphis, Tennessee, bringing the total square footage of operating space for the company to roughly 95,000.

Millstone is an outsource partner to many of nation's top orthopedic companies, and is a provider of advanced inspection, clean room packaging, loaner kit processing and distribution services to medical and dental device manufacturers worldwide.

Southwest Med Evac opens in Roswell, NM

Southwest Med Evac (Roswell, New Mexico) reported the opening of a new air medical services base in Roswell. The base will assist hospitals and first responders throughout the region with the rapid transportation of critical patients, primarily focused on scene response and inter-facility transport.

This new base will provide air medical transport services to patients and the medical communities of Roswell, Carlsbad, Artesia, Portales, Santa Rosa and Ruidoso; all of which are in New Mexico. These span Chaves, Eddy, Lea, Roosevelt, Lincoln, Guadalupe and Curry counties.

SEC warns investors of con-artist impersonators

The Securities and Exchange Commission (Washington) is warning investors and financial services firms about con artists who may use the names of actual SEC employees to mislead potential victims. The agency also is providing information to help potential victims protect themselves from SEC impersonators.

In some instances, investors in the U.S. and abroad have been tricked into revealing private information, giving fraudsters access to their brokerage accounts, and even sending money and other assets to imposters. In other instances, unknown individuals have attempted to impersonate SEC examiners to gather confidential information from broker-dealers and investment advisers.

Imposters have contacted firms by telephone, identified themselves as members of the SEC staff, and demanded immediate access to the firm's records, sometimes claiming to be conducting an "emergency" examination.

Investors should be aware that the SEC never makes or endorses investment offers or participates in money transfers. Nor does the SEC send e-mails asking for detailed personal information, or financial information such as PIN numbers.