Government & Policy

As meaningful use advances, a dilemma has emerged: balancing structured patient data with the narrative data physicians have long collected in the still-important conversations with patients.

The inside story of how a 5-hospital health system leveraged its Epic EHR to arm physicians with clinical decision support technology at the point of care. What ThedaCare learned: EHR vendors should be working in lock step with content vendors.

As federal officials look to outcomes-based quality measurements, physicians and informaticists say clinical data integration could help the limitations of EHRs in population health management.

Developing an effective framework for driving healthcare quality improvements proves a multifaceted, complex endeavor, and although EHR systems can play a positive role in the task, much of the technology still misses the mark. This was just one of several concerns put before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance June 26.

A security analyst who could have knocked out the internet in the late 1990s says the VA's hacking could be part of U.S.-China cyber salvos. Either way, the agency needs to standardize its web security, especially for PHI.

You'd be forgiven for thinking revenue cycle management technology is a bit, well, boring. You'd also be wrong. The coming years are going to see some big changes in the way hospitals get paid -- and the IT they use to track when and how they get paid is going to have to change as well.

The former CMS administrator and Harvard professor explained that even Massachusetts healthcare system is "not going to be sustainable without major changes and improvements," and that will be part of his political platform.

Speakers at the ICD-10 Forum on Monday said that now is the time to start the transition, including practicing with ICD-10 codes.

A longtime proponent of evidence-based medicine, Donald Berwick, MD, former administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, believes his home state's healthcare system can be a "model for the nation."

ONC has a real understanding of the importance of consumer engagement, the head of the ONC's Office of Consumer eHealth, says. When ONC was originally created and even when HITECH passed, there was a lot of emphasis on providers and hospitals. But it's only in more recent years that it's become more generally understood that patients and consumers play a critical role, too.