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The Certification Commission for Health IT has named three appointees to its board of trustees and five new commissioners, whose terms begin Jan. 1, 2010.
President Barack Obama announced Wednesday that the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) will administer nearly $600 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act awards to support construction and health IT projects in community health centers around the U.S.
The Pennsylvania Governor’s Office of Healthcare Reform issued a strategic plan this month in the hope of streamlining the creation of a health information exchange (HIE) through a collaboration between the governments of Pennsylvania and Delaware.
The U.K.'s National Health Services front-line spending will rise along with inflation, yet not without reforms across the public sector, including a reduction of £500 million (U.S. $812 million) from the NHS IT program, according to the 2009 Pre-Budget Report presented by Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling yesterday.
Data management company Accenx, a subsidiary of Initiate Systems, reported that MemorialCare Medical Centers has chosen its Accenx Exchange as the interoperability platform to support the California system’s physician outreach program.
QuadraMed, a provider of health IT and services, has entered into a definitive merger agreement to be acquired by Francisco Partners, a technology-focused private equity firm.
The nonprofit National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC) has invited nominations for leaders in the health and healthcare fields to serve on the NeHC Board of Directors.
The Cleveland Clinic recently announced an equity partnership with Explorys, a newly formed health IT company, to accelerate research and improve healthcare through real-time medical data exploration and research collaboration.
Iowa’s Medicaid program is the first to receive matching federal funds to plan for the implementation of an EHRs incentive program as established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).
The problem of developing security mechanisms needed for management protocols and policy management of personal health information (PHI) remains largely unsolved, according to Gerald Masson, PhD, director of the John Hopkins University Information Security Institute, who spoke at an assembly hearing of the Health IT Standards Committee on Nov. 19.
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David Blumenthal, MD, the national coordinator for health IT, today announced plans to make available $80 million in grants to help develop and strengthen the health IT workforce in the community college setting.
An “inappropriate definition" of meaningful use and “inefficient administration” of the Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive programs will lead to failed implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), resulting in the “needless squandering of resources and significant disruption” to the U.S. healthcare system, according to a letter written to David Blumenthal, MD, from the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA).
Current interoperabilty information security standards limitations for health IT include minimum encryption standards, which are not being met by many of the 7,000 contributing entities, according to Michael Mellor, chief information security officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
Siemens Healthcare released its newest project, Syngo.via, a software solution that automates case preparation, integrates imaging modalities and pre-existing solutions and consistently updates customers.
The Small Business Health IT Financing Act, which includes a provision authorizing the Small Business Administration to guarantee health IT loans to small business health practices or medical professionals, was passed by the House of Representatives last week.
The Carolina eHealth Alliance has selected Telus Health Solutions' health information exchange (HIE) product, Oacis HIE, to electronically connect patient records across 12 disparate emergency departments in South Carolina.
Written by Jeff Byers
Healthcare in the U.S. can only be reformed with standard computerization and systematic thinking, said George Halvorson, CEO of healthcare organization Kaiser Permanente, in a Web cast hosted by Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP last week.
The increased computerization of U.S. hospitals hasn't made them cheaper or more efficient, although it may modestly improve the quality of care for heart attacks, Harvard researchers reported in the Nov. 20 edition of the American Journal of Medicine.
Communications and IT company Harris announced this week it has acquired health IT company Patriot Technologies.
Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) introduced legislation last week that would help underwrite efforts by family doctors and other small medical practices to modernize their patients’ records and prescriptions.
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The use of health IT to reduce rehospitalizations will be welcome but also disruptive, said Stephen Jencks, an independent consultant in healthcare safety during a Feb. 24 webinar on the potential use of health IT to mitigate rehospitalizations, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
During the Health IT Standards Committee meeting on Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C., the Clinical Operations Workgroup sought to gather comments on proposed recommendations on implementation specifications for content exchange, vocabulary and code set standards for the Interim Final Rule of meaningful use.
The state of Maine currently has the largest operating statewide exchange in the country in relation to population. Although Devore Culver, Executive Director of Maine’s HealthInfoNet, expects that distinction to change in the months ahead, the state’s HIE is entering the final months of its demonstration phase, and is slated to move in to its full statewide implementation in the second half of 2010. Culver, who is former CIO of Eastern Maine Health Care, recently spoke with CMIO about the progress HealthInfoNet has made.
In 2006, the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), a branch of the FDA, began examining the number of medical device reports they received. Over the past two years, the number of submitted reports has increased, sparking a demand for the CDRH to make a move to electronic reporting.
A new hospital breaking ground usually isn’t breaking news. But the vision of patient care at one new facility, tentatively named Palomar Medical Center West (PMC West), is currently illegal under California state law.
