Workforce
Thousands of eligible providers are working diligently toward EHR incentive payments, but some practices are choosing a different route: abandoning meaningful use altogether in favor of their own solutions, and finding ways to make up for the penalties they'll incur down the road.
Just one in five full-time health information technology employees say they're "very satisfied" with their current job, a recent survey finds; a substantial 12 percent, meanwhile, say they're "very dissatisfied." But this is in marked contrast with IT consultants.
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, with more than 1,400 CIO and IT team members, has released a case study that delves into the workings of a Rush University Medical Center initiative that gives veterans opportunities to become part of a healthcare IT workforce.
Rush University Medical Center in Chicago has created a public community to support its EN-Abled Veteran Program, which helps military veterans transition to successful healthcare IT careers.
Joanne Sunquist knows Epic. As the chief information officer at the four-hospital HealthEast Care System in Minnesota, she's successfully spearheaded the new $135 million Epic electronic medical record implementation within an aggressive 14-month timeline across the hospitals, which went live June 1. The health system's 14 clinics will follow suit by December.
Lygeia Ricciardi, the first director of the Office of Consumer eHealth at ONC, will step down on July 25, National Coordinator KarenDeSalvo, MD, announced in an email to ONC staff.
As myriad healthcare organizations have attested, the aftermath of a HIPAA violation generally isn't a pretty sight, especially when it comes to one's bank account. One Indiana-based health system has witnessed this reality after being slapped with an $800,000 settlement for violating the HIPAA Privacy Rule.
Some 90 percent of healthcare organizations have reported at least one data breach in the past two years, with more than a third seeing more than five breaches. Gerry Hinkley, partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman's healthcare practice, says breach response is where many make major missteps, mistakes that can easily be avoided.
Who's to blame when EHR implementations go south? There's often enough fault to go around. But when the fallout is bad enough, sometimes self-interested parties are all too ready to point fingers.
The University of Cincinnati Medical Center is at the center of a legal battle that is the nightmare of every healthcare organization corporate counsel. The allegation is that a financial services employee of the hospital accessed the detailed billing records of a patient with a sexually transmitted disease and deliberately and maliciously published those records on Facebook, taunting and ridiculing the patient.