Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)
When it comes to America's healthcare costs, spiraling ever upward, one of the main culprits is unnecessary testing. One researcher says thinking more about the psychological roots of how physicians make decisions, and how information is presented to them, could help limit the ordering of gratuitous screenings.
Cloud-based EHR company athenahealth is expanding again. This time the growth will be in research and development, and it's all happening in Austin, where there is already a core of 36 software developers at work, along with 20 more in other parts of Texas.
HIMSS Analytics recognized 51 clinics of Northeast Georgia Physicians Group with the Stage 7 Ambulatory Award. NGPG becomes the sixth system in the country to receive the award.
Not all HIE products are created equal; some are more equal than others. At least that's according to the findings of a new Black Book Rankings report that names the top performing HIE vendors across five different categories.
The ONC's Meaningful Use Workgroup will submit draft recommendations for Stage 3 of the Meaningful Use EHR Incentive Program on Feb. 14. So far, the workgroup has developed a number of ideas that have consensus, but clinical quality measures may not be as easy to include in digital systems as previously thought.
CMS is extending the deadline for eligible professionals to attest to meaningful use for the Medicare EHR Incentive Program 2013 reporting year from 11:59 p.m. EST on Feb. 28, 2014, to 11:59 p.m. EST March 31, 2014.
A health IT consultant described the "Tower of Babel"-eqsue barrier she encounters coordinating disparate EHR systems to a panel at the Health Innovation Day conference. William Check, CTO at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association responded: "What you just described could have been the cable industries. It's amazing the parallel here."
Malcolm Gladwell, the best-selling author and New Yorker staffer, likened the change required for healthcare to clear the interoperability hurdle to several events of this generation, "three lessons in culture, framing and consequence," as he put it during a talk Thursday at Health Care Innovation Day in Washington.
Health networks and physician practices have the most to gain from an interoperable ecosystem and, it follows, the most to lose if it doesn't go right. But one could argue that American patients and taxpayers stand to gain or lose just as much.
Strong momentum continues for the meaningful use program as CMS revealed that it has disbursed more than $19 billion in reimbursement incentives. There were 440, 998 registered providers participating in the federal electronic health record incentive program as of the end of 2013, with $19.2 billion paid out in incentives, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.