Bernie Monegain

The government will award up to $1 billion to fund innovative projects across the country that test creative ways to deliver high quality medical care and save money.

The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) has launched its HIM Jobs for America initiative, and announced a public-private partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services. The announcement came last month at the association’s 83rd annual convention in Salt Lake City.

As Heather Budd tells it, Ray Lavoie, executive director of Blackstone Valley Community Health Care (BVCHC), which serves uninsured and under-insured patients, believes that a small, government-funded health center like Blackstone can provide care that equals or even rivals the care delivered by the private sector.

As if upgrading the nation’s ICD-9 code set for diseases and treatment to ICD-10, with its many thousands more codes, were not enough of a challenge for health information managers at hospitals and health systems across the country, now there’s this: ICD-11 is not far behind.

With the conversion to ICD-10 disease and treatment coding expected by the government-set deadline of Oct. 1 2013, and all that entails, a new career path is emerging in healthcare – the chief knowledge officer, or CKO.

Steven Bennett, vice president of recruitment firm Kirby Partners, got right to the point. "I do love your unhappy employees," he told an audience of about 100 CIOs Thursday at the annual fall forum of the College of Health Information Management Executives. "If it’s not me who calls, it’ll be some other recruiter."

Less than 10 percent of healthcare providers are more than halfway ready for ICD-10, according to a new report from research firm KLAS. Two that are well on their way to compliance, however, are Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego and St. Louis, Mo.-based SSM Health Care.

Global economic forces will compel the U.S. healthcare system to change the way it delivers care -- whether the key players are ready or not, former Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt told an audience of about 700 healthcare CIOs Wednesday morning.

Three South Dakota health organizations are poised to put a $900,000 federal grant to work by creating a community health information network that will make it possible for them to share patient information via electronic health records.

Some 26 percent of CIOs say their organizations have qualified to receive stimulus funding under the HITECH Act, and others expect to qualify in ensuing years, according to a recent survey from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME).