Erin McCann
The protected health information of 1,350 patients at the California-based Sonoma Valley Hospital was compromised after an employee accidentally uploaded patient information to the hospital website.
Idaho State University will pay $400,000 to the U.S. Department of Health Human Services to settle alleged violations of the HIPAA Security Rule. The settlement comes after ISU's Pocatello Family Medicine Clinic disabled server firewall protections for a period of at least 10 months, resulting in the breach of electronic protected health information for some 17,500 patients.
More than half of all eligible providers nationwide have received federal incentive payments for demonstrating meaningful use of electronic health records, rates that have more than doubled since last year alone, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Wednesday.
Transparency is a touchy subject in healthcare. It's one of the last market strongholds desperately clutching to its principles of secrecy, and it won't go down without a fight. But many experts say this stands as one of many reasons the industry continues to drag its feet in the innovation arena.
Ed Ricks, CIO of Beaufort Memorial Hospital in South Carolina, discusses the impact of health reform on health IT with Healthcare IT News Associate Editor Erin McCann.
Saying that the proposed legislation would address "the failure of DoD and VA to develop a single unified medical record," one of the bill's backers explains that it would require VA and DoD to prove they are implementing a plan for that single medical record.
Members of Congress are lauding a bipartisan bill that limits funding for an integrated electronic health record system between VA and DoD and requires aggressive progress updates from both agencies, which have, in recent months, come under fire for the dilatory pace at which they're moving forward with the iEHR.
Status quo doesn't sit well with the innovation team at Boston Children's Hospital. Being consistently ranked one of the nation's top hospitals is no easy task -- especially in the innovation arena. But Naomi Fried, the hospital's chief innovation officer, and her Innovation Acceleration Program dream team have risen to the challenge with the creation of four new mobile health apps.
Larry Garber is a believer. The physician and medical director for informatics at Worcester, Mass.-based Reliant Medical Group has seen electronic health records make big, real life changes both financially and clinically, and now he's set out to spread the word.
Responding to a feedback request from Senators on Capitol Hill regarding health IT adoption, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives called for a one-year pushback of the Stage 2 meaningful use deadline and defended the efficacy of the federal incentive program.