EHR

Sutter Health executives say its health information exchange will enable doctors and hospitals -- inside and outside its network of care -- to securely share clinical information. The organization sees it as a game changer, one that will boost care coordination and clinical quality across Northern California.

There are many dimensions to the Accountable Care Organization challenge, including the logistics of changing a well-established acute care model, the process of configuring the network, analyzing IT capabilities across the spectrum and determining how all those moving parts will work together.

With $23 billion already spent on incentivizing providers to adopt electronic health records, many in government and industry are wondering whether taxpayers and patients got what they paid for. The heart of the debate: The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, its meaningful use program and interoperable EHRs.

The folks at cloud-based EHR company athenahealth found cause to celebrate earlier this week when the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid posted the list of EHR products providers used to attest to meaningful use.

The American Hospital Association has called upon the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator to quickly finalize rules regarding the expansion of choice for certified electronic health records.

Republican Texas Representative Michael Burgess, MD, vice-chair of the subcommittee on health within the House Energy and Commerce Committee, had not always been convinced of the benefits of health IT. But Hurricane Katrina changed his mind. Today, Burgess is a champion.

Who's to blame when EHR implementations go south? There's often enough fault to go around. But when the fallout is bad enough, sometimes self-interested parties are all too ready to point fingers.

Athenahealth and Epocrates, an athenahealth service, released a mobile trends report that shows nurse practitioners, physician assistants and pharmacists emerging as the most engaged users of mobile technology today.

With its sights set on a Department of Defense deal, technology giant IBM announced Tuesday it was teaming up with EHR behemoth Epic Systems to compete for the DoD Healthcare Management Systems Modernization contract. The DHMSM is slated to replace the current Military Health System and will serve some 9.7 million beneficiaries.

One medical practice is in much better position for Stage 2 meaningful use, as an ongoing project that relays data from implantable cardiac devices directly into personal health records continues to show encouraging early returns.