Meaningful Use

It’s one week into summer, and healthcare professionals across the country are anxiously awaiting the final definition of meaningful use. To say they are eagerly waiting would also apply, but anxiously seems more precise because there is plenty of anxiety in the waiting.

The blockbuster merger between Allscripts and Eclipsys announced Wednesday is "a match made in heaven on a PowerPoint slide," says Sean W. Wieland, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray. But he anticipates some rough going at the start.

Many vendors, of course, are benefiting from the stimulus, with scores of hospitals scrambling to install EMR and CPOE systems in hopes of drawing a portion of the billions of dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Technology is always promising something and the iPad is no exception with some seeing it as a “game changer” for healthcare, and physicians in particular.

The American Telemedicine Association’s 15th Annual Meeting and Exposition kicked off May 16 with an expansive attitude, as ATA officials welcomed more than 3,000 registrants representing at least 35 countries to the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas.

The past month has seen an overwhelming surge of emphasis on healthcare IT inside the beltway, as a host of agencies prepare to implement the vast changes initiated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Chief information officers at some of the most wired hospitals in the country say they will be hard-pressed to qualify for federal healthcare IT incentives by next year.

Kevin Hutchinson serves on the federal Health Information Technology Standards Panel, advising President Barack Obama's national coordinator for health IT, Dr. David Blumenthal, on the development and use of health information interoperability standards.

Interoperability is a major part of the HITECH Act, the healthcare IT portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in February of 2009. And according to Dale Wiggins, chief technology officer of Philips Healthcare Patient Care and Clinical Informatics, it all starts with modalities.

Recently, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology issued its interim final rule for meaningful use, health information technology standards, and certification criteria and implementation specifications for electronic health record incentive payments.