Jeff Rowe

While the United States was enjoying its national Thanksgiving holiday last Thursday, officials of London, Ontario, hospitals were busy putting out the fires created by an IT architect who blew the whistle on outsourcing talks with U.S.-based Cerner Corp.

In pinning down the reason Canada has been slow to adopt EMRs in an interview with a Canadian newspaper, Richard Alvarez, president and CEO of Canada Health Infoway, pointed to a lack of collaboration among the many stakeholders. He’s absolutely right.

There's an interesting article in a recent issue of the Connecticut Mirror about the impact of EMRs on the patient-doctor relationship. It starts out with one patient telling a solo-practicing general surgeon that she's glad the surgeon doesn't have an EMR because the physicians spend more time on the computer than with the patient.

Tom Carter, a vice president at Kaiser Permanente, penned an opinion piece last week, discussing the benefits of EMRs. Carter's argument, however, is touting EMRs' business case for businesses - not healthcare providers.

HIMSS Analytics released data last week from its survey of 687 hospitals that reveals almost 25 percent are meeting 10 or more of the 14 mandatory Stage 1 meaningful use criteria requirements. That’s great news.

David Blumenthal, MD, head of ONC, was on hand last week to help announce the launch of EHRevent.org, a safety reporting system that will let healthcare providers report problems in the implementation and use of EHRs. It will serve as a tracking system so the industry can identify trends and react quickly.

I read an interesting column about an octogenarian woman who lived by herself, despite multiple chronic conditions including congestive heart failure, arthritis, gout and glaucoma. Her health deteriorated rapidly last year and her primary caregiver, her daughter who lived two and a half hours away, was faced with putting her independent mother in an assisted-living facility.

Maine's regional extension center (REC) forum last week presented another good session for healthcare providers on how to making the transition from paper to electronic a seamless one.

Many physician champions tout EHRs as an enabler for delivering quality care anywhere. Nova Scotia apparently is not full of physician champions.

The Ponemon Institute is releasing the results of its survey of 67 American healthcare organizations and their data breach incidents over the last two years. It turns out that the customer losses and legal fees for the privacy violations rack up an average of $1 million per hospital.