EHR
Among America's dichotomies: The country is widely-viewed as a leader in IT, yet the healthcare industry is notoriously perceived as lagging others in tech adoption. But is it really? To find out, Healthcare IT News Contributing Editor Tom Sullivan spoke with Medicomp Systems CEO David Lareau, who travels the globe and meets with healthcare customers in other nations.
There was no shortage of big news made -- or announced -- at the 2013 HIMSS Annual Conference & Exhibition in New Orleans. As elusive as interoperability has been, the time has come, and people from every part of the industry are taking it seriously, including the CommonWell Health Alliance.
Citing the crush of an increasing workload and dwindling government funding, the Office of the National Coordinator has proposed a health IT user fee that would be imposed on health IT vendors who certify their products through the ONC Health IT Certification Program.
Denver Health and Hospital Authority CIO Gregg Veltri discusses the biggest achievements made in health IT in the past decade with Healthcare IT News Associate Editor Erin McCann.
The Office of Inspector General has proposed three significant changes to safe harbor regulations pertaining to electronic health record services, according to a notice in Wednesday's Federal Register. These amendments include updating the provision under which EHR software is considered interoperable, eliminating the electronic prescribing requirement from safe harbor and extending the sunset provision date.
The Senate Finance Committee will hold a hearing April 9, beginning at 10 a.m., to consider President Barack Obama's nomination of Marilyn B. Tavenner for administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
In the new world of healthcare -- one that is focused on collaboration, accountability, providing better care and cutting costs -- Aetna executives view the insurer's newly minted Healthagen division, unveiled last month at HIMSS13, as an indispensible piece of getting things right.
In looking at the impact clinical decision support systems have had on the healthcare provider community, it is tempting to refer to the old adage "Be careful what you wish for." Because in the healthcare context, it means "You wanted more data, now you've got it. What are you going to do with it?"
National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Farzad Mostashari and the federal Health IT Policy Committee on April 3 took a hard look at a new vendor-led coalition to promote interoperability, called the CommonWell Health Alliance.
For 15 years, Congress has bestowed special privileges to some small remote hospitals, usually in rural areas, to help them stay afloat. Medicare pays them more than it pays most hospitals and exempts them from financial pressure to operate efficiently and requirements to reveal how their patients fare. Nearly one in four hospitals qualifies for the program. Despite these benefits, there's new evidence that the quality of many of these hospitals may be deteriorating.