Chelsey Ledue

Mergers and acquisitions this year have put an emphasis on IT integration and continuity of care, according to Mark Reibolt, CPA, managing partner and chief executive officer, Coker Capital Advisors, Alpharetta, Ga.

The U.S. needs to address the challenges of patient privacy and security in order to put healthcare IT to the best use, said ONC head David Blumenthal, MD, Monday at the Medical Group Management Association’s annual conference.

L.A. Care Health Plan, the nation’s largest public health plan, has approved $529,000 to support five Los Angeles County community clinics’ health information technology projects.

There seems to be more and more money going into biomedical research, with not enough product coming out, according to researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. This is where iMedConsent comes into play.

L.A. Care Health Plan has approved $153,000 in funding for the Western Health Information Network (WHIN) to help connect a minimum of 10 Los Angeles County community clinics to an existing health information exchange network.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan has designated more than 1,800 physicians in roughly 500 practices across the state as patient-centered medical homes, the largest PCMH effort in the United States and one that has information technology at its core.

The Premier healthcare alliance has launched an $86 million "major new strategic plan" that will help hospitals leverage informatics to meet healthcare reform measures.

Since implementing an EHR system in 1997, Heart of Texas Community Health Center, one of the 2009 HIMSS Davies Award winners, has tripled the number of its patients, expanded from a single location to 10 sites, and shown improvement in important quality indicators.

Medicaid programs in Tennessee and Pennsylvania will receive federal matching funds for state planning activities to implement the electronic health record incentive program established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.