Jeff Rowe

"Location, location, location" is a phrase that's long been associated with real estate, but in recent years it's also played a role in attempts by healthcare professionals to track disease. Now, some are putting health IT to work in adding location information -- where patients have lived -- into their EHRs.

There's a commonly held perception that healthcare is a process in which doctors take care of patients. But increasingly healthcare stakeholders are figuring out that, at times, a more effective way to help patients get healthy is to show them how to take care of themselves.

Remember when doctors made house calls? It's probably safe not to expect the return of those days any time soon, but some healthcare stakeholders are saying the time has come for providers to take a more active role in their patients' healthcare.

If you were a healthcare provider and all you did was read press releases, you'd be tempted to think that transitioning to a new EHR involved little more than opening the package and plugging in the contents. Naturally, things are a little more complicated than that.

There are buzz phrases, and then there are buzz phrases. And if there's one phrase that has permeated the healthcare sector more thoroughly than all the others, it's probably "accountable care." But what exactly does it mean? Or, more to the point for healthcare providers, how do you know when you're actually providing it?

The ONC Town Hall at the mHealth Summit on Tuesday put consumers center stage with a discussion of how patients are getting plugged in to their own healthcare.