Bernie Monegain
A recent study by research firm KLAS, “Executive Reaction to the Stimulus Package,” addresses the shift in IT project timelines since the ratification of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and its provisions for healthcare IT.
The new, IT-laden, $485 million, 300-bed El Camino Hospital, in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, has been in the planning for six years and under construction for three years.
A healthcare system in Tacoma, Wash., a women’s center in Virginia, a network of community health centers in the Bronx and a health center called Heart of Texas will all receive the 2009 HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence.
In this Newsmaker interview, Healthcare IT News editor Bernie Monegain speaks with Linda Kloss, CEO of the American Health Information Management Association.
t's flu season. Just yesterday (Sept. 22), I heard on the news Michael Kurtz, a pediatrician in Centennial, Colo., south of Denver, say that in the last 10 days his three-office practice, which has 35,000 patients, had diagnosed 30 to 50 cases of swine flu a day. These diagnoses were not lab confirmed, he said, but the pediatricians in Centennial were confident they were on the mark. They tested for two strains of flu – influenza A and influenza B. State officials told them that 98 percent of positive influenza A tests are the H1N1 flu.
Calling its role in the healthcare IT realm “mission accomplished,” officials at the National Health Alliance for Health Information Technology ended a seven-year run on Sept. 30.
The heads of the federal Health IT Standards Committee, Jonathan Perlin, MD, and John Halamka, MD, moved the panel at its meeting last month to the next phase of work – guidance for implementation.
The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology will launch new certification programs on Oct. 7.
The number of attendees and exhibitors at the annual convention of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) could be down this year because of the economic downturn, but spirits are high, said Lynette Czarkowski, AHIMA’s vice president of HIM products and services.
Jonathan Rothman and Mike Gerardi, MD, see themselves as a perfect match for the work they do.