Interoperability
With the Dec. 14 deadline on health insurance exchanges, states were required to provide a blueprint of their plans to the Department of Health and Human Services for how they will create their state-based health insurance exchanges. About half of the states have decided to surrender control to the federal government to build an exchange for them.
At the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology 2012 Annual Meeting, held Dec. 12 in Washington, DC, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) told attendees that interoperability is a lynch pin for health IT advancement, and it is currently lacking.
Two months after the launch of the Massachusetts HIE, Laurance Stuntz, director of the MeHI, discusses the HIE's journey so far and the road ahead. Formerly a senior VIP at the healthcare communications company NaviNet and a partner at Computer Science Corporation, Stuntz joined MeHI in May.
A new report shedding light on the challenges data breaches pose for the healthcare industry finds that the annual number of breaches continues to trend upward, and also could come with a nearly $7 billion price tag.
The New England Telehealth Consortium has awarded a four-year contract worth more than $16 million to FairPoint Communications to provide carrier ethernet services to more than 400 healthcare sites in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.
Sixty-nine percent of U.S. primary care physicians reported using electronic medical records in 2012 -- up from 46 percent in 2009, according to findings from the 2012 Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey. But in the U.S., just 11 percent of physicians said they had referral information available when it was needed.
Federal campaign builds usership to 1 million
Data exchange makes strides, but much work remains
The Statewide Health Information Network of New York sees itself as a "public utility" as much as an HIE. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, as patients bounce between hospitals (and as other public utilities, such as electricity and transportation, are compromised), it has enabled critical continuity of care.
Erica Rosolen is the young director of the TICSA study center at ISALUD University. To learn more about the group, which is already a major player in healthcare ICTs in the region, EHealth Reporter Latin America interviewed Doctor Rosolen.