Government & Policy
The healthcare IT industry just marked the 10-year anniversary of then President George W. Bush's call to action -- in his 2004 State of the Union address -- to finally transform a paper-mired healthcare system into a digital-age industry. CIOs and other industry insiders speak to the progress and look to the future of health IT.
Informaticists joined clinical quality experts in a brain storming session with new ONC chief Karen DeSalvo, exchanging ideas on developing the "next generation" of quality measures.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill again expressed concern over the botched development and higher-than-expected price tag of creating a seamlessly integrated electronic health record between the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, ultimately tacking on project funding restrictions in the House's Omnibus Appropriations Act passed Jan. 15.
Karen DeSalvo, MD, appears to have the right background to understand the challenges facing the healthcare system. Beginning with her childhood experience as a public health clinic patient and including work as an internist managing a hospital's medical records committee, she has direct experience with the system at all levels.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has released what it calls Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience guides: nine toolkits to help providers make safer use of electronic health records and other technology.
Electronic health record incentive payments to eligible docs and hospitals continue to climb into the new year. The "inexorable progress" of the federal EHR incentive program continues, with payments to providers moving ever closer to $20 billion.
Caring for New Orleans' poor two decades ago, the new ONC leader found herself working in a system that "was really not what we should see for any person on the planet." After trying to reform that system post-Katrina, she's now taking on national problems.
With clinician dissatisfaction in EHR usability persisting, users and designers need to collaborate more -- and question the government and industry's assumptions on the best paths forward, Jacob Reider suggests.
Leon Rodriguez will be vacating his post as HHS Office for Civil Rights director to assume a new position as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director at Homeland Security, leaving a vacancy open for the job of HIPAA's chief enforcer.
OCR Director Leon Rodriguez, the man responsible for enforcing HIPAA during the past three years, has been nominated to take the hot seat at the Department of Homeland Services.