Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)
Reavis Eubanks, MD, defies the odds when it comes to giving up his paper charts and adopting an electronic medical record system. First, solo doctors, by many accounts, have a tough time making the transition; there's no IT personnel on staff to guide them and to troubleshoot, and then there's the issue of cost.
Christopher Boone, director of outpatient quality and health IT for the American Heart Association in Dallas, will fill a vacancy on the federal Health Information Technology Policy Committee. Boone will fill one of three committee positions held by advocates for patients or consumers.
Former President Bill Clinton will deliver the keynote at HIMSS13 in New Orleans on March 6. HIMSS officials released its list of speakers on Sept. 5, the same day Clinton delivered the keynote at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.
The Hawaii Island Beacon Community is focused on improving care for individuals with complex chronic conditions to avoid hospital readmissions, and engaging patients to better understand and get involved in their care. Contributing Editor Mary Mosquera saw first-hand how it works.
Sue Schade has been named chief information officer of University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers, after 12 years as CIO of Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate Brigham and Women's Hospital, which is part of Partners HealthCare.
In a year and a half, Unique Electronic Health Records will become obligatory in Colombia. Law 1438 of 2011, which reformed the Social Security System for Colombian healthcare, states that the Single Electronic Health Record will be obligatory by the 31st of December 2013.
The second quarter of 2012 proved to be better than the troubled first quarter for Allscripts. The EHR company reported Q2 bookings of $194.1 million, revenue of $370 million and cash flow from operations at $58.8 million, better than what financial analysts expected.
Robert Kolodner, MD, admits to keeping a low profile following his stint as interim National Coordinator for Health IT, a position he left in 2009 after a 31-year government career - three years at ONC, and before that 28 at the Department of Veterans Affairs. As chief informatics officer at VA, he led the development of VistA, the department’s open-source electronic health record.
Look up the term "bioinformatics" and the definition will most likely be a convoluted series of references to algorithms, databases, artificial intelligence, computation theory, discrete mathematics, signal processing, statistics and a half-dozen other terms for complicated concepts. In essence, it is difficult to explain because there are so many facets to it.
Two years ago this summer, the meaningful use Stage 1 final rule was revealed to an eager public. Immediately, hospitals and physician practices got down to business. Since then, core measures have been tackled and menus sets have been ticked off lists. Some criteria were relatively doable, some have remained maddeningly problematic, but more than $2.5 billion in checks have been mailed out so far.