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In this table, we've combined the meaningful use objectives for both eligible professionals and hospitals for the Stage 1 adoption year, the required EHR technology criteria to accomplish those objectives and what criteria the government will use to measure meaningful use.
On Feb. 3, IBM announced that it will acquire leading healthcare Master Data Management vendor Initiate for an undisclosed sum. The healthcare IT sector is white hot right now, so it is likely IBM paid a pretty penny for Initiate.
The Meaningful Use Notice of Proposed Rulemaking included clinical decision support rules as one of the objectives providers must implement. More emphasis on using CDS capabilities from EHRs and EMRs is something that Robert Murphy, MD, chief medical informatics officer at Memorial Hermann Healthcare System in Houston is excited about and applauds.
When it comes to advancing health IT, New York State and New York City really put their money where their mouths are. The latest endeavor by the City is a Panel Management Program, which is administered by the New York City Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene's Primary Care Information Project (PCIP).
John Halamka, MD, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center in Boston, asked his students at Harvard School of Public Health to develop these lists of barriers to EHR implementation within their organizations.
Emma Schwartz wrote a very compelling article in the Huffington Post Investigative Fund about physician groups whose purchases of EMRs from unstable companies resulted in faulty products that never delivered. The EMR companies she profiled went bankrupt, leaving their physician-group clients high and dry.
Over the last few years, federal and state health IT policymakers have paid little attention to the problem of managing provider identities.
Physician adoption of EHRs has been rising, according to surveys by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Commonwealth Fund and Kalorama Information. What's driving the trend is not necessarily the promise of ARRA bonuses.
The spending estimate for health IT provisions in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act seems like a moving target. I guess that's the nature of estimates, anyway.
Several folks have asked - will the iPad revolutionize healthcare? The answer is Yes and No.