Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)

For more than two years now, the focus of healthcare conversation has been on how the provider community will ensure “meaningful use” of electronic medical records.

With hospitals "raising the bar" to meet meaningful use requirements, new positions are being created within IT departments that have a focus on quality and data, says one consultant.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology is seeking comments on approaches that will enable providers and other healthcare entities to obtain and manage digital certificates that are cross-certified with the Federal Bridge.

Leveraging efficiencies of the electronic health record, four independent physician practices have earned the position of finalist for the 2011 HIMSS Ambulatory Care Davies Award of Excellence.

St. John's Medical Center in Joplin, Mo., will rebuild and come back stronger, its executives pledged in a news conference held earlier this week. Part of the rebuild is putting the EHR – installed less than a month ago – back online.

As it addresses an "explosive growth of medical information," IBM has expanded its Health Analytics Solution Center – with team members working to increase and improve remote EHR connectivity through new "Watson"-like analytics power.

A new personal health record platform set to launch this summer aims to give parents anytime, anywhere access to a comprehensive view of their children's health records.

Keeping its "eye on the prize, but feet on the ground," the advisory panel to the HIT Policy Steering Committee recently took a step closer to pushing back Stage 2 of meaningful use. Such a delay, the committee said, would grant providers more time to incorporate other deadline-driven health IT projects – most notable, the massive ICD-10 conversion – into their agendas.

The 17 Beacon Communities, stretching from Maine to Hawaii, are celebrating their first anniversary. While much progress has been made, it is clear that this is "a journey of quality improvement that never ends," as one expert put it.

The start-up and management costs of an accountable care organization (ACO) is considerably higher than estimated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in its proposed rule, according to the American Hospital Association.