Quality and Safety
Meaningful use incentives, HIPAA and ICD-10 conversion are combining to create a high demand for healthcare IT professionals in the marketplace. Eric Marx, vice president of healthcare IT services for IT staffing and recruiting firm Modis, discusses what hospitals and other healthcare organizations are doing to find the right people for the right jobs.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a final rule Monday on telemedicine credentialing and privileging that aims to not only make the process less cumbersome for small hospitals and critical access hospitals (CAHs) in rural areas, but also to provide more timely care.
Many vendors give short shrift to the usability of their electronic medical records, says Jiajie Zhang, who is devoting the next three-plus years to addressing this usability factor - something he believes has been a barrier to physician adoption.
A podiatrist in private practice in Birmingham, Ala., says using an iPad has improved his workflow and given him more time with his patients.
The Health IT Standards Committee has begun exploring some of the functions that electronic health records should be capable of performing in Stage 2 of meaningful use, with providers using health information exchange to send patients their information to a personal health record (PHR) a prominent example.
The Montana Senate voted to restore the $35 million in federal incentives for electronic medical records for hospitals and community health centers across the state this week.
In response to the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis in Japan, Elsevier has offered free access to its primary online clinical reference tools to all IPs originating from that country.
As healthcare organizations work to make the transition from paper to digital, one area that should not be overlooked is the provider credential verification process, says one expert.
The ONC announced earlier this week that more than 60 healthcare and health IT organizations - from EHR vendors to integrated delivery systems to state-based and private-sector HIEs - have expressed their support for the Direct Project's simple and secure messaging protocols.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) formally launched its innovations website, where it plans to gather and test new ideas to improve the healthcare system for its Medicare, Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).