Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)

The 16-day government shutdown that ended Oct. 17 brought the work of the Office of the National Coordinator to a screeching halt, with cancelled meetings of high-level federal advisory committees and workgroups. But with the end of the shutdown, all hands are on deck and ready to work, according to ONC officials.

Healthgrades' new report reveals how hospital selection can dramatically affect patient outcomes. The study, released Oct. 22, shows that individuals are far more likely to die or suffer complications at hospitals receiving the lowest Healthgrades rating.

Best practices are all well and good, but sometimes it's instructive to take a look at worst practices -- the mistakes everyone should be sure to avoid. When it comes to meaningful use audits, there's simply too much at stake.

First he won on Jeopardy!, now he's going to try to beat leukemia. The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center announced Friday that it will deploy Watson, IBM's famed cognitive computing system, to help eradicate cancer.

Device encryption may seem like a fairly straightforward undertaking, but it's proven to be one HIPAA-covered entities and business associates frequently forgo -- much to their chagrin down the road, when they're notifying individuals of a privacy breach involving unencrypted personal data.

The Cleveland Clinic's annual Medical Innovation Summit got under way at the new Global Center for Health Innovation on Oct. 15. Cleveland Clinic CIO C. Martin Harris spoke about how the health system stays nimble on the innovation front.

The Department of Veterans Affairs continues to be one of the biggest offenders of HIPAA privacy and security rules and has reported egregious breaches in recent years, affecting millions of veterans and active service members.

Though he no longer has authority over meaningful use regulations, former ONC chief Farzad Mostashari, MD, said that due to the nature of the federal regulatory process, it would be difficult to introduce more flexibility for complying with the Stage 2 rules.

UNC Health Care is using IBM big data analytics to help hospital workers reduce costly and preventable readmissions, decrease mortality rates and improve patient care.

A Tennessee-based healthcare provider is notifying thousands of patients that their protected health information has been compromised following a privacy breach due to unencryption. The incident has prompted the hospital to move its records to an encrypted cloud-based server.