Erin McCann
Some 90,000 University of Washington Medicine patients got a surprise this Thanksgiving, and it wasn't a very good one.
It's a hard knock life being a CIO in the healthcare sector. Federal regulations have shifted IT teams' priorities away from their typical laundry list of day-to-day tasks. But, as responsibilities pile up and overtime hours accumulate, this year as Thanksgiving nears, even CIOs have something to be grateful for.
In its second reported data breach this fall, Kaiser Permanente is notifying patients seen at its Anaheim Medical Center that their protected health information has been compromised after a USB flash drive containing patient data went missing.
With annual healthcare expenditures topping $2.7 trillion, industry leaders are rushing to take new cost-cutting measures. One of those measures involves displaying the costs of lab tests in an EHR so docs can see a real-time price comparison of what they're ordering. From a savings perspective, it's working.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) has proposed a bill to extend meaningful use incentives to mental health practitioners, who currently have been left out of the program.
When a medical privacy breach occurs, it's most often the patient who gets notified that their personal information was compromised, not the provider. But that's not always the case.
Currently, mental health providers are not eligible to receive federal electronic health record incentive payments under the meaningful use program. One U.S. Senator, however, is working to change that.
Working in a hospital IT department is no walk in the park. Teams who were named to our 2013 Best Hospital IT Departments list opened up about how they keep employees motivated, retain top talent and meet a laundry list of deadlines -- all without losing their minds.
Data breaches and cybersecurity threats in healthcare are going to happen. It's virtually unavoidable. What can be avoidable, however, are the messy consequences of substandard risk assessment strategies and inadequate threat response.
If more office-based docs got on board with health information technology solutions, they'd be able to see more patients while also lightening their overall workload, according to the findings of a new Johns Hopkins study.