June 11, 2013 Pete Rivera
The ONC recently announced two systems from EHRMagic decertified for Meaningful Use. These systems were not capable of performing certain functions deemed necessary for Meaningful Use. This not only impacts the physicians on this system, but is a shot across the bow for all systems that said they could capture and report Meaningful Use data, but really used smoke and mirrors.
June 10, 2013 David Raths
Earlier this year, six U.S. senators released a report questioning the government's investments in health information technology, particularly in the area of interoperability. Understandably, they are impatient to see data flowing between provider settings. But most successful regional health information exchanges seem to have in common that their progress has been slow. Building governance and business models took years but the effort is now paying off.
June 6, 2013 Gabriel Perna
Health Datapalooza IV has come and gone. Approximately 2,000 people came to Washington D.C.’s Omni Shoreham hotel to talk healthcare, data, and everything in between. One of the major themes of discussion? Whether or not patent-generated data can be infused with traditional clinical data.
June 4, 2013 Joe Marion
SIIM is trying to reinvent itself with a broader focus than radiology imaging. Will the upcoming annual meeting demonstrate success in the metamorphosis?
June 4, 2013 David Raths
Accountable care organization leaders say they have no interest in being software developers. Yet some believe they have no choice but to develop their own systems when they find nothing on the market that matched their needs.
June 4, 2013 David Raths
Jeremy Hunt, MP, Secretary of State for Health in the United Kingdom, reminded the Health Datapalooza audience that the United States is not the only place that technology innovations are being applied to rethink how chronic conditions are treated. (One-quarter of UK citizens have chronic conditions, he noted.) “Several transformational things are happening in the UK,” he said, “and technology is right at the heart of it.”
June 3, 2013 Mark Hagland
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today made an important announcement at Health Datapalooza IV, being held in Washington, D.C. this week. Her announcement of the release of hospital outpatient charge data, as well as Medicare spending and utilization data, will further federal officials’ strategy of forcing hospitals towards greater transparency.
June 2, 2013 Mark Hagland
Earlier this year, The New England Journal of Medicine published a compelling, research-based commentary in its Perspectives section, entitled “Use of Health IT for Higher-Value Critical Care,” by Lena M. Chen, M.D., and several other colleagues. The implications of Dr. Chen’s team’s research findings are potentially far-reaching for hospitals, and especially for CMIOs and other clinical informaticists.
May 31, 2013 Gabriel Perna
We’re at the point where more than half of all doctors and other eligible providers have received Medicare or Medicaid incentive payments for adopting or meaningfully using electronic health records (EHR). And yet it seems like widespread EHR satisfaction is a pipe dream.
May 30, 2013 John DeGaspari
With a fast-approaching date for compliance to the Final Rule under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), business associates and their subcontractors are being thrust into a world where they will be held accountable for protecting health information. Many of those entities may be caught unprepared or even unaware that they are considered a business associate. That can expose them to substantial penalties when the HHS Office for Civil Rights is expected to commence routine HIPAA compliance audits in September.
May 30, 2013 Rajiv Leventhal
As health systems continue to prepare for disaster, one program, through the use of mobile technology, has gone leaps and bounds to make sure that patients who are still recovering are getting the attention to their health that they so badly need.
May 30, 2013 David Raths
Not many healthcare CIOs make the jump to the CEO position. Healthcare Informatics asked Yousuf Ahmad how his five-year tenure as CIO might shape his thinking as CEO of Cincinnati-based Mercy Health.
May 28, 2013 Mark Hagland
Attendees at the third annual HCI Executive Summit participated in a number of important discussions, as roundtable discussion-based sessions and lecture-based sessions all turned to the opportunities and challenges facing healthcare IT leaders around healthcare reform, population health, analytics, and related topics.
May 28, 2013 John DeGaspari
How can public-private partnerships drive better health and quality of life? One example of such an initiative is the Louisiana Public Health Institute (LPHI), which has collaborated with physicians and hospitals to create a community-wide care-coordination system for New Orleans.
May 24, 2013 Gabriel Perna
Many healthcare organizations have struggled to adopt and use social media properly, citing valid concerns over privacy and the patient-provider relationship. Yet there is hope in California, as a live-tweeted surgery shows that organizations such as UCLA Health System are figuring it out 140 characters at a time.
May 23, 2013 David Raths
Once MemorialCare's hospitalists started drilling down into their own data, they realized their group was an outlier in terms of keeping patients in the hospital longer and ordering more tests than peers in other hospitals.
May 21, 2013 Rajiv Leventhal
Although HIPAA allows patients to view and amend their medical records, most never have and don’t realize that they can. Doctors have concerns regarding this, but a recent year-long pilot showed that patients value access to their notes. Thus, the age-old question remains, should patients read their doctors' notes?
May 20, 2013 David Raths
An informatics research team finds that although the technology exists to build a robust national learning health system, a multitude of business, political and social roadblocks stand in the way.
May 20, 2013 Tim Tolan
When it’s time to negotiate the offer with a future employer, the last thing you want to do is drop a bomb regarding a future bonus or other form of compensation you will be receiving after your projected start date. If you choose to wait to disclose this information thinking it might help your cause, think again. You just took your problem and dropped it off at your future employer's doorstep - talk about an awkward situation.
May 17, 2013 Gabriel Perna
An opinion piece from Jonathan Bush, the CEO, President, and Chairman of the Board of athenahealth Inc. recently caught my attention. Bush was advocating for better venture capital investment in healthcare IT and made a pertinent point about how fee-for-service models of reimbursement have stifled innovation.
