Interoperability
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.
Meridian Health and Hackensack University Health Network announced merger plans on Oct. 16; if the deal clears regulatory hurdles it would result in New Jersey's largest hospital network. In the meantime, it's offering the chief information officers of each organization plenty to think about.
Raising concerns about security practices with the Obamacare website HealthCare.gov, the U.S. House Science Committee has issued a subpoena to compel U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park to testify about his role in creating the site.
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.
When Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell snagged national coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD, to help in the Ebola fight, neither entity said whether she would return to ONC or stay on as acting assistant secretary at HHS over the long term. It turns out that she will continue her ONC work in several ways even while assigned to the Ebola detail.
The American Medical Association released a statement Monday that points to the organization's concern over the recent departure of key leaders from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. The ONC exits most recently include the coordinator herself, Karen DeSalvo, MD.
The topic at the Cleveland Clinic annual summit this Monday was healthcare innovation -- what's impeding it, what more is needed to foster it and the innovation milestones taking place today. It may come as no surprise: Health IT came up a lot at this year's event. (And, yes, so did Judy Faulkner.)
The healthcare industry is swimming in Social Security numbers, thanks to the necessities of patient record management technology. But balancing those requirements with fraud mitigation and privacy protections is proving a big challenge.
Wes Wright, chief information officer of Seattle Children's Hospital, had a couple big reasons for embracing a virtual desktop infrastructure strategy for the 323-bed tertiary care facility. "Speed and ubiquity," he says. But soon he found a bonus.
The Ebola cases in the United States, despite their limited numbers, have generated considerable discussion and anxiety. But the focus on EHRs in these discussions does not recognize more prominent health IT needs when it comes potential outbreaks, nor the ways we have yet to meet most of these needs with incentives and infrastructure.