Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)

Patients worry about not being able to access their paper medical records when they need them the most, placing that above concerns about whether their records contain inaccuracies or are stolen, according to a new survey.

One of the lesser discussed factors determining whether to adopt EHRs or not is the number of years that a physician who owns his or her practice has left before retirement.

Health IT is a team effort. The whole point is to increase communication and coordination among the different players in the health care system. You just can’t go it alone in this field.

As hospitals across the country strive to roll out electronic medical records and cope with an estimated shortage of more than 50,000 information technology professionals, Duke University is expanding its informatics programs.

GE Healthcare announced that its Centricity Practice Solution version 9.5 has been inspected by the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) and is a premarket conditionally CCHIT Certified 2011 Ambulatory EHR, with additional certification for child health and cardiovascular medicine with advanced reporting.

Stockholders of healthcare IT developers Allscripts and Eclipsys approved the merger of the two companies at a special meeting held Aug. 13.

Orlando Health will implement a Web-based decision support checklist tool to assist physicians with diagnosis decisions.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is readying a set of electronic accounting and processing tools that will help authenticate, track and manage payments to healthcare providers participating in the federal meaningful use financial incentive program.

Healthcare providers who already use electronic health records urged a federal health IT advisory panel last week to add more goals for improving patient care coordination into the meaningful use financial incentive plan.

Christiana Care Health System a private, not-for-profit tertiary-care hospital system with locations in Wilmington and Newark, Del., has announced two major initiatives that aim to drive healthcare IT adoption.