Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)
A two-hospital health system in Ohio has come up with a unique way to pay for its new electronic medical record system: Selling the leasing rights to its non-hospital properties.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has named electronic prescribing network provider Surescripts as an organization that can test and approve certain electronic health records modules, bringing to a total of six the groups authorized under ONC's temporary certification program.
As the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) prepares to upgrade its computer systems and begins to award incentive payments to eligible meaningful users of electronic health records, the Office of the Inspector General is positioning itself for its monitoring responsibilities.
On our FAQ page, we posted a revised Question and Answer regarding an issue that has recently caused confusion in our meaningful use regulations: namely, the flexibility that providers have to defer performance on some Stage 1 meaningful use objectives; and how that squares with the requirement that providers must nonetheless possess fully-certified EHR systems.
"This year, significant strides were made in health information technology," David Blumenthal, MD, the national health IT coordinator, wrote in his blog detailing health IT achievements for 2010.
With federal approval of its statewide health information exchange secured, Wisconsin officials say organizations will begin implementing the plan in early 2011.
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, is pressuring President Barack Obama's administration to defend how it has spent money fighting Medicare fraud, including the addition of new fraud-fighting IT.
NIIT Technologies, one of the world's largest IT corporations, has entered the U.S. healthcare industry with the acquisition of an electronic health records and referral management platform.
Geisinger Health System, a physician-led healthcare system of northeastern and central Pennsylvania, has notified approximately 2,928 patients that some of their protected health information (PHI) was disclosed in an unauthorized manner.
Registration for the Medicare and Medicaid electronic health records incentive programs opens Jan. 3, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has announced. Eligible professionals, eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals (CAHs) must use certified EHR technology to be eligible.