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A lot can go wrong in a paper-based, manual workflow. On the surface, the inter-office mail envelope might seem harmless, but it can lead to big problems.

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.

ICD-10 is a multi-headed beast. As such, there are many faces to the new code sets; some are well known while others, often just as important, are not so understood.

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.

As we look forward to the transformation that the stimulus will accelerate, it's worth thinking through where this change may lead us. The real question is, how will the widespread use of electronic health records change healthcare in America?

At the iHT2 Summer Health IT Summit in Denver last week, hospital executives talked about what they must do to achieve meaningful use from EHRs. Some health organizations, such as Catholic Health Initiatives, are starting from scratch. You'd think being an early adopter would give a system a leg up, but going in fresh has its advantages.

The Health Information Exchange (HIE) market is the Wild West right now.

Depending upon whom you believe, the numbers are all over the place in terms of how much defensive medicine costs the healthcare industry and the country.

All the attention of late has been on the final rule for meaningful use of EHRs, but the health IT training made possible by funding under the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has a far-reaching impact beyond the healthcare industry.

Perhaps it's waiting on the back burner but ICD-10 did not make the cut of health IT's most important projects for 2010 and 2011, at least not among healthcare executives.