Government & Policy

IT decisions made today will affect future initiatives and health insurance exchanges' ability to keep pace with healthcare reform.

There are buzz phrases, and then there are buzz phrases. And if there's one phrase that has permeated the healthcare sector more thoroughly than all the others, it's probably "accountable care." But what exactly does it mean? Or, more to the point for healthcare providers, how do you know when you're actually providing it?

Marilyn Tavenner's confirmation as official administrator of CMS immediately drew positive reactions from nearly every corner of the industry and government, as several healthcare stakeholders reacted to the 91-7 landslide Senate vote that took place late Wednesday. Tavenner is the first administrator in nine years to receive Senate confirmation.

Ed Ricks, CIO of Beaufort Memorial Hospital in South Carolina, discusses the impact of health reform on health IT with Healthcare IT News Associate Editor Erin McCann.

Saying that the proposed legislation would address "the failure of DoD and VA to develop a single unified medical record," one of the bill's backers explains that it would require VA and DoD to prove they are implementing a plan for that single medical record.

Members of Congress are lauding a bipartisan bill that limits funding for an integrated electronic health record system between VA and DoD and requires aggressive progress updates from both agencies, which have, in recent months, come under fire for the dilatory pace at which they're moving forward with the iEHR.

Has OMB lost its way toward the ambitious, if not sprawling, datacenter consolidation and Cloud-First initiatives?

"It's systems that let ordinary people do extraordinary things," national coordinator for health IT Farzad Mostashari, MD said during a Health IT Policy Committee meeting talk that vice chair Paul Tang described immediately afterward as "inspiring and challenging."

American Telemedicine Association President-Elect Ed Brown, MD is the founder and CEO of Ontario Telemedicine Network in Canada. Healthcare IT News caught up with him at the recent ATA conference in Austin, Texas, to talk with him about the state of telemedicine and what he envisions it will be in the coming years.

The promise of HIEs to provide insights across the continuum of care that can dramatically alter the health of populations is emerging as among the most significant reasons for exchanging health data.