Mary Mosquera
An advisory panel that is shaping measures for the next stage of meaningful use has suggested delaying Stage 2 by one year, until 2014, as an option to give vendors and healthcare providers more time to update and roll out more advanced technology.
The Health IT Standards Committee has begun exploring some of the functions that electronic health records should be capable of performing in Stage 2 of meaningful use, with providers using health information exchange to send patients their information to a personal health record (PHR) a prominent example.
The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to contract for management services to streamline and modernize the processing of its healthcare claims and develop tools to detect fraud and waste. It will also update IT services to help control costs in its beneficiary travel program.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) formally launched its innovations website, where it plans to gather and test new ideas to improve the healthcare system for its Medicare, Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
The advisory panel that is developing proposals for the next set of EHR quality measures is weighing whether to follow the same structure for Stage 2 of meaningful use as for Stage 1, with core and specialty items, and whether to carry forward the 2011 measures.
The advisory panel that is developing proposals for the next set of EHR quality measures is weighing whether to follow the same structure for Stage 2 of meaningful use as for Stage 1, with core and specialty items, and whether to carry forward the 2011 measures.
Many regional extension centers are already discovering best practices to reach primary providers in their region and begin the job of digitizing their records to meet meaningful use guidelines.
The Veterans Affairs Department is wrestling with how to let physicians securely use popular external sites that enable them to store patient data online, such as Google and Yahoo, while ensuring that veterans' health information is adequately protected.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is establishing several "communities of practice" to help its Beacon program establish clinical decision support technologies, care transitions programs, and pharmacy solutions and tools in healthcare improvement projects.
The White House has called for a "universal exchange language" to enable healthcare providers to share health information in real time, in order to modernize and coordinate diagnosis and treatment while incorporating privacy and security of personal data.