Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)
Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder. What about usability when it comes to machines and especially software? Is it unreasonable to expect elegance?
Michael Grunwald, author of The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era, spoke to Healthcare IT News about the making of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and about why health information technology may be the most lasting and transformative pillar of the stimulus bill.
Jonathan Bush, CEO of athenahealth, opines on the state of HIEs and explains the obstacles associated with EHR usability.
How easy or difficult EHRs are to use is suddenly center stage, now that usability testing is part of the EHR certification criteria for meaningful use Stage 2. We spoke with five healthcare IT insiders, who offer a glimpse of key factors they associate with usability.
Boston Children’s Hospital knows a little something about what it takes to be at the top. Consistently recognized for its medical specialties and patient care, it is considered one of the best pediatric hospitals in the world.
An idea can change a lot over eight years and while the intent of interoperability remains essentially the same, its application has split off in various directions since 2004, when the Bush administration called for establishment of electronic health records, universal connectivity between healthcare providers and named David Brailer, MD, as national health information technology coordinator.
One year after Cerner abandoned its EHR implementation project at Girard Medical Center, the two don't appear to be any closer to a settlement of their legal struggle.
The Health Information and Management Systems Society has named Honolulu-based Hawai'i Pacific Health winner of the 2012 Enterprise HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence. Hawai'i Pacific Health is a Stage 6 hospital in electronic health record adoption; a nonprofit healthcare system; and Hawaii's largest healthcare provider.
Providence Health & Services, which employs more than 64,000 people in five states - Alaska, California, Montana, Oregon and Washington - will roll out speech recognition technology across the healthcare system to 8,000 clinicians in 27 hospitals and 250 clinics.
The upfront investment, development charges and personnel costs associated with traditional electronic health record (EHR) implementations make clear that getting to Stage 1 Meaningful Use is only the beginning of the investment. Additional enhancements required for Stage 2, changes in the regulatory environment, even minor code fixes - all will dramatically increase the overall cost of an already expensive proprietary EHR system.