A list of the covered entities that have reported health information data breaches impacting more than 500 people now has been posted by the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on its Web site.
The Department of Health and Human Services has named Joy L. Pritts, a lawyer, as the first chief privacy officer at its Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC).
Acumen Solutions has been selected to provide a cloud computing customer relationship management and project management application to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services' Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC).
The Georgia Department of Community Health has been award $13 million by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to support the state’s effort to expand EHR use and create the infrastructure for health information exchange (HIE).
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Department of Labor (DOL) Secretary Hilda Solis have released a total of nearly $1 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) awards to help healthcare providers advance the adoption and meaningful use of health IT and train workers for the healthcare jobs.
In a letter to Leslie Margolin, president of Anthem Blue Cross, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius recently asked Anthem Blue Cross to publicly justify its decision to raise premiums for its California customers by as much as 39 percent.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has awarded more than $119 million to U.S. states and territories to support public health efforts to reduce obesity, increase physical activity, improve nutrition and decrease smoking.
It is impossible to imagine a high-performing U.S. health system that does not take full advantage of the computing technology that has transformed virtually every other aspect of human endeavor, wrote National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal, MD, in a commentary published Feb. 4 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The administration of President Barack Obama is requesting $911 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in its 2011 federal budget proposal, with an additional $110 million requested for continued health IT efforts.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued a contract bid to create a panel to identify and explore the negative unintended consequences of activities supported by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT in coordination with other federal agencies, including activities related to meaningful use of certified EHR technology.
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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has posted a notice of final rule in the Jan. 28 Federal Register requiring each state to adopt a system to report certain adverse licensure actions taken against licensed healthcare practitioners to the Secretary of HHS, effective March 1.
Written by Jeff Byers
The progress toward defining meaningful use has been impressive, but the timeline may be too compressed for many, said Steven Stack, MD, member of the board of trustees at the American Medical Association (AMA), last week, during the eHealth Initiative's second Webinar on meaningful use. “Also, to digitize 20 percent of the U.S. economy in a three- to five-year period, there’s not enough workforce to do that,” Stack said.
While the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and its Center for Health IT supports the goals of the new meaningful use regulations announced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the organization stated that the regulations, as proposed, pose hurdles that challenge small- and medium-size medical practices’ ability to achieve all that is required to receive the incentive payments.
The Certification Commission for Health IT (CCHIT) will update both of its EHR technology certification programs to conform to the Interim Final Rule of meaningful use recently released by the Department of Health and Human Services. Applications will begin to be accepted Feb. 12.
Aggressive interoperability timelines require specific implementation guides and reference implementations, wrote John D. Halamka, MD, CIO at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, in his blog, on which he summarized the comments he received from colleagues concerning the interim final rule and notice of proposed rule-making for the proposed meaningful use definitions.
It is not appropriate to make a broad recommendation for a public disclosure process for adverse events in hospitals, according to a recent memorandum from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
An estimated 500,000 BlueCross BlueShield members may be at risk for identify theft following an October data security breach at a Chattanooga, Tenn., office. While most of the at-risk members reside in Tennessee, BlueCross has identified 32 states with 500 or more members whose data may be at risk as of Jan. 8.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) intends to solicit and award a task order contract to acquire services for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), in order to re-identify a health Information Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) de-identified dataset.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente recently launched a pilot medical data exchange program in San Diego enabling clinicians from VA and Kaiser Permanente to obtain views of a patient's health using EHR information through the National Health Information Network.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released four notices seeking contractors to assist and evaluate the administration of grant programs from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT that promote state health information exhanges and the creation of health IT training centers.
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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.
