News

Mature electronic health record systems and health information exchange capabilities contributed to the success of five of the 10 accountable care organization (ACO) demonstration sites funded by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, according to a CMS official.

The web-based resources are aimed at helping businesses understand the financial implications of new tax regulations and grandfathering provisions with the new healthcare law, in order to make health plan selection easier.

The U.S. Coast Guard awarded Epic Systems Corp. a $14 million contract to set up an electronic health record system with a broad array of state-of-the-art e-healthcare features.

The Integrated Healthcare Association (IHA), a statewide leadership group that promotes quality improvement, accountability and affordability of healthcare in California, has named its top 45 performing physician organizations for 2009 based on the IHA statewide Pay for Performance (P4P) program measures.

Health Resources and Services Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has bestowed $792,000 on the University of Louisville School of Nursing with an eye towards helping it develop a nursing informatics program for the school's undergraduate and graduate students, as well as for practicing nurses from University of Louisville Hospital.

While the Regional Extension Center program was designed to assist priority primary care providers in small practices, hospitals and public health clinics, some industry groups worry that rural communities and communities of color will still be left behind the digital transformation.

In a move that will broaden its identity verification offerings, Equifax, the credit reporting and business information company, announced Monday that it has acquired Anakam, a maker of large-scale, software-based, multi-factor authentication solutions for hospitals, HIEs and e-prescribing, among others.

The Joseph H. Kanter Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the creation of a National Health Outcomes Data Sharing Network, has launched a contest designed to solicit ideas for creating a collaborative activist network that would advocate the sharing of healthcare information.

A UCLA-led consortium of five University of California medical schools and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has received a $9.9 million grant from HHS's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to investigate the use of wireless and telephone care management to reduce hospital readmissions for heart failure patients.

Coast Guard will replace DOD system with system to integrate medical, dental, laboratory, pharmacy, radiology and patient portal modules.