Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)

2013 has been billed as the year of EHR dissatisfaction, with up to 23 percent of physician practices reporting they were trading in their current EHR system for a new brand altogether and, according to a new Black Book Rankings report, there were a handful of vendors that came out on top.

Providers are increasingly using electronic health records, both to manage their patients' care and to provide more information to those patients, according to new data published Wednesday by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

"Location, location, location" is a phrase that's long been associated with real estate, but in recent years it's also played a role in attempts by healthcare professionals to track disease. Now, some are putting health IT to work in adding location information -- where patients have lived -- into their EHRs.

As we reach the "tipping point" of electronic health record adoption, the Office of the National Coordinator has issued a mark for EHRs and other health IT products that's meant to serve as visual proof that they can offer functionality, interoperability and security.

National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari, MD, told members of the Health IT Policy Committee on Tuesday to remain steadfast, bask in the progress made over the past four years, but continue to "react and respond to the world as it is, while striving to make the world as it should be."

The HITECH Act has had its desired effect so far, according to the latest annual report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which finds heartening adoption levels of health IT across the board, from small physician practices to academic medical centers, over the past three years.

Healthcare, which has always been based on the doctor-patient interaction, is nearing the end of Stage 1 meaningful use, and as the industry increases its reliance on electronic health records, it faces a new challenge. That conundrum, says Nick van Terheyden, MD, and CMIO at Nuance Communications, is how to reconcile the need for standardized structured data capture with the importance of narrative in patient-doctor interactions.

Whether Americans see Edward Snowden as a hero or a traitor, the ongoing story of his deliberate leak of classified security information has caused some to sit up and take stock of all matters related to information technology, data and privacy.

Developing an effective framework for driving healthcare quality improvements proves a multifaceted, complex endeavor, and although EHR systems can play a positive role in the task, much of the technology still misses the mark. This was just one of several concerns put before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance June 26.

Tenet Healthcare's $4.3 billion acquisition of Vanguard Health Systems is likely to bring more business athenahealth's way, Piper Jaffray analyst Sean Wieland concluded in a note he issued June 24, even as he offered up other possible scenarios, such as a MED3000 business win, or a boon for Cerner.