Jeff Rowe

Everyone in the industry is painfully aware of the state of hospitals today, even before the economic recession sent healthcare providers down a darker, deeper spiral. Add healthcare reform and the federal incentives for the meaningful use of health IT to the mix, and you’ve got major changes that would make mere survival monumental.

Emergency rooms fully equipped with EHRs have been credited with treating patients who eventually have shorter hospital stays than hospitals that have paper or basic EHRs, according to a new study.

An editorial in the American Medical Association's American Medical News applauded the relaxation of the proposed meaningful use criteria when HHS came out with the final rule in July. Still, the editorial says that the road to meaningful use will be "tough."

Cloud-based EHRs are being touted as a cost-effective alternative for physicians who are worried about the price tag of client-served, software-based EHRs. A recent article, however, questions whether they are such a good choice for a number of valid reasons.

One of the federal goals of having providers implement EHRs is to better track, manage and improve population health, but a recently published report by the Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) finds that EHRs aren't equipped to complete those tasks.

Christine Bechtel, vice president of the National Partnership for Women & Families and member of the federal health IT policy committee, testified at a recent Committee on Ways and Means hearing.

The Rev. Will Bloedow of Appleton, Wis., was at the Health Industry Forum in Boston touting the benefits of EMRs.

Continuing on the theme of Monday’s blog on driving critical mass, two significant medical certification boards - the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) and the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) - have announced their intention to make health IT deployment a standard in their assessment and certification of physician competency.

Commercial payers don't come to mind when you think of health IT adoption, but many have been active in the area for quite a while.

The final rule on the meaningful use of EHRs may have been released three weeks ago, but the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid are not idly standing by.