Neil Versel
Richmond, Va., gastroenterologist Michael P. Jones, MD, is not anti-technology. He just does not like electronic medical records in their current form. He's expecting the technology to improve, but for now, he's opted for paper charts.
Epic Systems Corp. will help Oregon Health & Science University set up two laboratory installations of its EpicCare electronic health record on its servers for medical informatics education and research purposes. On the research side, the school will have access to Epic's source code.
If hospital chief information officers and vendor hiring managers think it's tough to find qualified health IT workers now, just wait until technology implementation moves beyond EHR installation, data capture and moderate interoperability to a full-blown effort to transform a broken healthcare industry.
Don't hold your breath if you are looking for a delay in meaningful use Stage 2 of the federal EHR incentive program.
Wish there could be a delay of Stage 2 meaningful use? Talk to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, not the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. And don't hold your breath.
An early pioneer in medical informatics, Morris F. Collen, MD, one of seven founding partners of the Permanente Medical Group, turned 100 on Nov. 12.
The patient identification issue refuses to go away, mainly because nobody has quite figured out how to assure proper patient identity in health information exchange. At the CHIME Fall CIO Forum in Phoenix, some leading hospital CIOs emphasized the importance of accurate patient matching.
Though he no longer has authority over meaningful use regulations, former ONC chief Farzad Mostashari, MD, said that due to the nature of the federal regulatory process, it would be difficult to introduce more flexibility for complying with the Stage 2 rules.
Healthcare organizations with long-established electronic health records run the risk of "note bloat" and compromised patient safety unless they standardize physician documentation procedures and limit the amount of cutting-and-pasting doctors have to do, attendees of CHIME's Fall CIO Forum heard at a session on Oct. 9.
Allscripts President and CEO Paul M. Black, hired in December 2012 to rescue the troubled EHR vendor, and other company executives sounded defensive and optimistic notes this week as they attempt to regain the confidence of customers, investors and health IT industry analysts.