News
The National Quality Forum Board of Directors has unanimously named Christine K. Cassel as its new president and chief executive officer. Cassel will begin her position at NQF effective mid-summer 2013, according to an NQF statement made Dec. 17.
The decision to implement clinical decision support may be a tricky one. Once you've committed to spending the time, money and resources on getting it up and running, you want to be certain it will fly within the scope of what your healthcare system can offer.
Scott Lundstrom, group vice president of IDC Health Insights, says that states should expect the final health insurance exchange deadline to be pushed back and calls the federal-state model a “tiger trap.”
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 Healthcare IT News/HIMSS Media Privacy & Security Forum in Boston on Dec. 13, two CIOs offered their tips on conducting risk assessments -- and the OCR's chief enforcer reminded the audience of the high cost of not doing them.
In 2011, Micky Tripathi, founder and CEO of Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative (MAeHC) and health IT industry expert, found himself in unfamiliar territory after an unencrypted MAeHC laptop containing 14,475 patient medical records was stolen from an employee's locked car. After working to rectify the situation transparently, Tripathi said no one is immune from data breaches.
Mark Warner, a Democrat Senator from Virginia, called for "crystal clear requirements for systems," says HIPAA may need to be altered slightly, and just having meaningful use is not enough.
As Tim Zoph sees it, it's decision time for patient data security -- a defining moment for "one of the issues of our time in healthcare," that demands healthcare leaders everywhere step up. Zoph, CIO of Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago since 1993 and a CHIME/HIMSS CIO of the Year, headlined the Healthcare IT News and HIMSS Media Privacy & Security Forum Dec. 12 in Boston.
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.
Healthcare IT News' top 10 list of the largest healthcare data breaches of 2012 should send a blaring message: Healthcare organizations are not taking the steps necessary to protect patients' personal health information