Molly Merrill
The increasing adoption of EHRs and other digital technologies by primary care physicians and specialists points to trends expected to help create "dramatic upswings in doctors' case loads," according to a new survey by research company Knowledge Networks.
Today some ambulances come equipped with telecommunciations technology that allows in-transport contact with physicians. But even the minutes between when a patient is loaded into the ambulance, or out and into a care setting, can leave room for miscommunications, according to one expert.
The electronic prescribing rate in upstate New York increased from 12 percent in 2009 to 17 percent in the first quarter of 2010, representing 3.6 million new and renewed prescriptions on an annual basis, according to a new report. The report suggests that this number will grow significantly as the result of the technology becoming more affordable, due in part to the government's incentives for health IT adoption.
E-mail use between patients with diabetes and hypertension and their doctors resulted in improved quality of care scores, according to a study of patients in Kaiser Permanente's Southern California region.
Just one year after its launch, officials at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report that 57 percent of patients and 40 percent of referring community physicians are using its Web-based portal for personal health information.
Sentara Healthcare in Norfolk, Va. and Nemours in Jacksonville, Fla. are finalists for the Davies Organizational Award from the Health Information and Management Systems Society. The awards will be announced in September and given during the annual HIMSS conference and exhibition in Feb. 20-24, 2011.
MedNetworks, a new company launched on Monday, uses technology to map, analyze and activate social networks across a broad range of health constituencies in order to identify trends and predict future behavior.
The American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) is creating a new measurement tool to incorporate meaningful use into its Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program, which requires physician specialists to conduct an ongoing measurement of six core competencies.
Google announced on Wednesday that it's no longer developing Google Wave, its Web application for real-time communication and collaboration, as a standalone product. It's unclear if this will impact whether the company continues to develop the idea of using the Google Wave Protocol to represent individuals' health records.
Six states and the District of Columbia are the latest to receive federal matching funds for state planning activities necessary to implement the electronic health record incentive program established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.