EHR

With just 2 percent of physicians having managed to attest to Stage 2 meaningful use, clearly something is holding back the vast majority of docs from succeeding in the program. The American Medical Association says they should not be penalized.

Geisinger Health System and xG Health Solutions, a company founded by Geisinger, have connected a software app to an electronic health record by employing a new draft standard developed by international standards organization Health Level Seven.

In emergency situations like the Ebola crisis that reached American soil this fall, do covered entities need to comply with the HIPAA Privacy Rule? New guidance put out by the Department of Health and Human Services sheds light on how exactly organizations are expected to adhere.

Cerner CEO Neal Patterson put EHR interoperability front and center during the Cerner Health Conference, a client gathering that drew some 11,000 participants to the Kansas City Convention Center this week. There, he made a big announcement about Cerner's participation in the CommonWell Health Alliance.

A fresh batch of disheartening Stage 2 attestation numbers has prompted several industry groups to once again implore the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to shorten the meaningful use reporting period in 2015 and offer more leeway on some of its more problematic measures.

The final Physician Fee Schedule rule for 2015, published by CMS on Oct. 31, brings with it a number of changes that physicians and practice managers need to understand about chronic care, telehealth and meaningful use.

The past few years have been "a very, very intense time" for health IT workers, said Jim Turnbull, chief information officer at University of Utah Health Care, speaking at the CHIME Fall CIO Forum this past week. As he and other CIOs look ahead toward the next few years, they see more challenges still to come.

You want genomic analysis and big data to take off? Don't count on it until interoperability becomes more than just a plan tossed about in federal HIT policy meetings. It actually needs to come to fruition, said Cleveland Clinic's Chief Information Officer C. Martin Harris. Otherwise, healthcare innovation: Welcome to limbo.

The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology, better known by its acronym CCHIT, is ending all operations, and expects to conclude the process by later this month. The closure follows an announcement earlier this year that it would stop EHR certifications and focus on advisory services.

MedStar Health, the largest healthcare provider in Maryland and the Washington, D.C., region, and Cerner have signed a seven-year agreement to streamline operations, help improve the quality of patient care and develop technologies that align with MedStar's vision.