Government & Policy

In efforts to guarantee patient access to their lab tests, the nation's largest pharmacies are now promising to adopt the Blue Button personal health record.

Last month, the Identity Theft Resource Center produced a survey showing that medical-related identity theft accounted for 43 percent of all identity thefts reported in the United States in 2013. According to HHS, the theft of a computer or other electronic device is involved in more than half of medical-related security breaches.

A renowned cancer researcher says genomics have put America on the brink of a much better treatment for cancer, but it is going to take a megawatt petabyte effort and that old stickler, standards.

With an eye on reducing hospital readmissions and boosting patient care coordination, Partners HealthCare at Home, a division of Partner's HealthCare in Boston, is rolling out new remote monitoring technology.

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.

Just eight months out from the ICD-10 compliance date, fewer than 10 percent of physician practices say they've made significant progress in their readiness for implementation, according to the Medical Group Management Association.