Interoperability
Electronic health records have seen encouraging uptake among office-based physicians in recent years, with eight in 10 now having at least a basic EHR in place. But what do these doctors really think about how health IT works at the point of care? Their frank opinions may surprise you.
With just 2 percent of physicians having managed to attest to Stage 2 meaningful use, clearly something is holding back the vast majority of docs from succeeding in the program. The American Medical Association says they should not be penalized.
Geisinger Health System and xG Health Solutions, a company founded by Geisinger, have connected a software app to an electronic health record by employing a new draft standard developed by international standards organization Health Level Seven.
Cerner CEO Neal Patterson put EHR interoperability front and center during the Cerner Health Conference, a client gathering that drew some 11,000 participants to the Kansas City Convention Center this week. There, he made a big announcement about Cerner's participation in the CommonWell Health Alliance.
Meridian Health and Hackensack University Health Network announced merger plans on Oct. 16; if the deal clears regulatory hurdles it would result in New Jersey's largest hospital network. In the meantime, it's offering the chief information officers of each organization plenty to think about.
You want genomic analysis and big data to take off? Don't count on it until interoperability becomes more than just a plan tossed about in federal HIT policy meetings. It actually needs to come to fruition, said Cleveland Clinic's Chief Information Officer C. Martin Harris. Otherwise, healthcare innovation: Welcome to limbo.
When Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell snagged national coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD, to help in the Ebola fight, neither entity said whether she would return to ONC or stay on as acting assistant secretary at HHS over the long term. It turns out that she will continue her ONC work in several ways even while assigned to the Ebola detail.
The American Medical Association released a statement Monday that points to the organization's concern over the recent departure of key leaders from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. The ONC exits most recently include the coordinator herself, Karen DeSalvo, MD.
The topic at the Cleveland Clinic annual summit this Monday was healthcare innovation -- what's impeding it, what more is needed to foster it and the innovation milestones taking place today. It may come as no surprise: Health IT came up a lot at this year's event. (And, yes, so did Judy Faulkner.)
Charles Jaffe, MD, CEO of standards organization HL7, came away from the joint meeting of the federal Health IT Policy and Health IT Standards committees earlier this week, thinking that the industry could move faster on interoperability. And HL7 has just the thing to change the game.