November 14, 2012 Mark Hagland
One thing seemed clear last week at the AMIA 2012 Conference: physician informaticists are helping to move the discussion—and the solutions—forward towards new solutions in the physician documentation arena
November 13, 2012 David Raths
Mobile health solution helping identify community-wide asthma triggers that can be improved or eliminated
November 9, 2012 Gabriel Perna
It has been a momentous week for healthcare, to say the least. The election is over. The President is back in office for another four years, the House is still in the hands of Republicans, and the Democrats have maintained the Senate. In healthcare, a status quo election may not appear to mean much, but every expert I’ve talked to over the past three days seems to think this election will have implications for various policies going forward.
November 7, 2012 Joe Bormel
Should physicians stay in clinical practice full-time, part-time, or not at all? The non-clinical hassles around caring for patients—administrative, technological and workload combined with compensation issues—are causing many physicians to re-examine their career paths.
November 7, 2012 David Raths
Health Story is supporting a project team within HL7 that is working to create a standard for “Patient Authored Documents” using the HL7 CDA standard.
November 6, 2012 Pete Rivera
Information Technology (IT) is always one of those things that are often taken for granted during mergers. From an operational view, it’s all just “computers,” right?
October 31, 2012 Gabriel Perna
A recent report, brought to my attention by the nice folks at The Advisory Board Company, looked at how more doctors in the U.K. are using the Medical Defence Union (MDU) because they are being stalked on social media by an infatuated patient. Reading this report and having covered social media in healthcare extensively, I can understand why some doctors are reluctant to connect with their patients on social media, even when it has nothing to do with love.
October 30, 2012 Gwen Darling
Late last month, CHIME released the results of a recent survey of CIOs, which found that more than two-thirds are reporting shortages on their staffs. For those of us who make our living helping to bridge and overcome that gap between talent supply and demand, the overall findings in this survey were not surprising. But there was one specific statistic cited in the survey that was particularly unsettling.
October 29, 2012 David Raths
The average 14-year-old boy spends 23 hours per week playing video games. Are there ways for healthcare providers to put that predilection to educational use?
October 26, 2012 Gabriel Perna
David Chao, Ph.D., chief technology officer of The Advisory Board Company, could talk about the Washington, D.C.-based research, technology, and consulting firm’s recent Patient Engagement Blue Button Challenge for hours on end. The thing that impresses me about this initiative, and others like it, is a fostering of this attitude that “if you build it, they will come.”
October 25, 2012 David Raths
The patient-centered medical home model has the potential to reduce the cost and increase the quality of care for patients with multiple chronic conditions. But are the health IT tools available today adequate to support the tasks of clinic care managers?
October 24, 2012 Mark Hagland
As Medicare reimbursement issues create gloom for physicians nationwide, medical group leaders nationwide are facing profound 'chicken-or-egg' questions around how and even whether to invest in the critical IT investments, especially clinical ones, that will be needed to forge the new healthcare.
October 24, 2012 Tim Tolan
It strikes a nerve with me when I hear this now famous song by Queen (also performed by Queen + Paul Rodgers – which I like as well!), and I begin to think about the times during my career when I decided to call it quits and move on to greener pastures. You know the feeling, right? The mind begins to wander, and you begin to question your decisions - how will this organization function without my leadership, and what about the major projects underway? Surely they will fall apart if I leave now? And what about the great team I have in place, including those who joined the organization because of me? What will happen to them and their careers after I’m long gone?
October 24, 2012 Mark Hagland
Healthcare Informatics has opened its annual Innovator Awards program to submissions from leaders at hospitals, medical groups, health systems, and health information exchanges: it’s time to make sure your outstanding teams get recognized for their groundbreaking work
October 23, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
I’ve learned that being given the freedom to try new things, fail, and succeed, can ultimately lead to innovation, professional growth, and personal satisfaction. I saw the power and promise of iterative learning at a presentation on Watson, IBM’s technology that uses the ability to analyze both structured and unstructured data, natural language capabilities, hypothesis generation, and evidence-based learning to support medical professionals as they make decisions.
October 22, 2012 Joe Marion
Another year is rapidly drawing to a close. But, before the year-end holidays there is that “little” event in Chicago after Thanksgiving called the RSNA (Radiological Society of North America) annual meeting (http://rsna.org/Annual_Meeting.aspx). For anyone who has attended, they will know that it is a huge event that is next to impossible to cover despite spanning almost a week. I am trying to put together my “wish list” for what I need to see this year.
October 19, 2012 Gabriel Perna
In the past, I’ve written about how many CIOs from major hospital and healthcare systems are expressing doubts about how cloud computing can be used to provide better care while saving money. While a level of pessimism is definitely there, people like Robert Kaufmann, M.D., from the Kaufmann Clinic, are making me realize the path to that $5.4 billion may be paved with smaller providers, more willing to take a leap into the cloud.
October 18, 2012 Tim Tolan
I get it. More and more Americans are removing traditional land-line telephone service from their homes. I did it more than four years ago and have never looked back. What I don’t get is why a candidate would to use their cell phone to interview for their next position, knowing any number of issues could (and probably will) turn up. It’s a horrible idea.
October 17, 2012 Mark Hagland
Perhaps the thought was inescapable in the context of the current presidential election campaign going on right now; after all, the second presidential debate, in which a very engaged pair of presidential candidates had sparred very intensely over a wide range of topics, had just taken place the night before. But I couldn't help thinking about Farzad Mostashari, M.D., as speaking like a political leader when he appeared at the CHIME Fall forum on Wednesday, Oct. 17-and I mean that in a good way.
October 17, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
So much of what I’ve learned through my years of interviewing CIOs, CMIOs, and other leaders is that culture change is usually at the heart of healthcare IT innovation. What I learned recently from Stephen J. Dubner, who was the keynote at the 2012 New York eHealth Collaborative Digital Health Conference, is that what incentivizes behavior change is often very hard to predict.
