Interoperability
It may not come as any surprise: Electronic health record vendors don't play well with others. At least that's according to healthcare providers who say, in the lion's share of cases, their EHR is not interoperable with others.
Will hospitals be forced to buy HP desktops, laptops and printers from one group and the servers that connect them from another?
HIMSS executives this week had three big messages for the Department of Health and Human Services and newcomer chief Sylvia Mathews Burwell: They want to see serious changes with meaningful use, interoperability and clinical quality measures.
With the recent news that four more participants in CMS's Pioneer ACO program are dropping out, the future of this important piece of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is in doubt, now that just half of the original 32 sites remain.
Wes Wright, chief information officer at Seattle Children's Hospital, says a new analytics tool that unobtrusively monitors the performance of his HL7 transactions "gives me peace of mind."
An overarching theme from a vendor's first analytics conference is similar to something that EHR vendors have been saying for years: workflow and organizational culture are at least as important as the technology itself when it comes to healing healthcare through IT.
ONC chief Karen DeSalvo, MD, promised an audience of AHIMA members that the government would act "fast into interoperability." She drew applause when she added, "We cannot wait for 10 years to get this done."
Neglected to pick up your prescription? Now, there's a good chance your doctor will know and do something about it, thanks to a slew of new partnerships between CVS Health and various health systems.
Now in its eighth year, the annual Health 2.0 Fall Conference has evolved from a showcase for not-ready-for-prime-time apps that wouldn't exist a year later to a self-congratulatory Silicon Valley pep rally to a more mature event that seems to be addressing real-world healthcare problems.
Thirteen of the nation's major healthcare systems are one step closer to interoperability, after they are now able to electronically share health records with disparate EHRs upon signing on to the country's largest health information network.