Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)
Hospital watchdog The Leapfrog Group has released the elective delivery rates of 773 hospitals online. The data reveals significant variation among hospitals in their early elective - meaning without medical reason - rates of Cesarean section and elective inductions, with some hospitals having 10 times the rate of others.
HealthGrades, Inc., an online healthcare quality rating and services company, has identified the top 50 cities for hospital care. The list recognizes cities that have the highest concentration of top performing hospitals - those ranked the top 5 percent nationwide for care.
The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology has announced that EHR technology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston has been certified as a complete EHR under CCHIT's new EHR Alternative Certification for Hospitals (EACH), an ONC-ATCB certification program for installed hospital EHR technology.
As hospitals and health systems across the country grapple with achieving meaningful use of electronic medical records, Accenture is the latest to offer a survey on how they are doing. This one is a survey of CIOs from health systems with advanced use of EMRs, and one of the key findings is that most health systems underestimate the time and cost of implementation.
The charter tenants for Cleveland Medical Mart & Convention Center (Cleveland MMCC) were introduced this past Friday, at a groundbreaking held in front of more than 600 business, civic, community, and political leaders.
The Kansas Academy of Family Physicians (KAFP) has launched a patient centered medical home initiative involving eight practices, which will run over the next three years.
CIOs told a federal panel Tuesday about the roadblocks they have faced on their way to achieving meaningful use of electronic health records. Among those who testified before the Implementation Workgroup of the federal Health IT Standards Committee were five members of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME).
Mobile technology has become an must-have tool for Walgreens, which bills itself as the nation's largest drugstore chain. The company now offers mobile applications for iPhone, Android and Blackberry, featuring text alerts for more than 1 million subscribers and a function that allows patients to scan the bar code of their prescription to send in refills.
New research from the National Quality Forum (NQF) supports the use of effective IT tools and promotes clinical decision support. The two reports, Driving Quality: A Model to Measure Electronic Health IT Use and Driving Quality and Performance Measurement: A Foundation for Clinical Decision Support, also delve into ways to measure health IT use.
Seven of the many applicants to the Rural Health Program Awards, funded by Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota (BCBSND), together will receive $375,000 in funding for 2011.