Meaningful Use
Think the chances of getting a meaningful use audit are slim? Tell that to the folks who lost their job for doing it wrong, or folks at the four-hospital Scripps Health, who, all told, have undergone 11 meaningful use audits to date. Some say mock audits are indeed the right prescription.
Healthcare CIOs report their workload is growing in both scope and complexity, and there seems to be no end in sight. This is according to a new report from nationwide healthcare executive search firm SSi-SEARCH.
Bill Spooner "retired" from his post as leader of Sharp HealthCare's 450-member IT team on Feb. 14. The quotes around "retired" are necessary because he has something in the works -- he won't say what yet. It's something that will keep him working halftime, or maybe more. It's too hard to leave healthcare IT altogether at this promising juncture, he says.
The brainchild of medical researcher, professor and self-made billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, NantHealth is aimed at solving the interoperability crisis and connecting the industry in the most powerful of ways -- a direct response of discontent with the federal government's EHR Incentive Program.
The news that someone slipped a provision into the Sustainable Growth Rate patch legislation that will once again delay the transition to ICD-10 is disappointing, and symptomatic of the seemingly unreliable relationship that exists between providers, technology vendors and the government.
Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD, discusses interoperability, meaningful use, and ACOs as he highlights the benefits of the "clinical operating system" from NantHealth.
It looks like the steep climb to meaningful use Stage 2 could be rocky. There is no shortage of challenges to worry about, but at the University of Utah Health Care, the woman in charge of the ICD-10 project is finding new ways to get things done -- even as the health system focuses on its EHR rollout.
Members of the Health IT Policy Committee approved a set of recommendations Tuesday that will bring meaningful use Stage 3 requirements one step closer to federal approval and scale back the initial Stage 3 proposals by 33 percent.
Steven M. Schiff, MD, a physician and CMIO, writes about how technology has changed how he relates to his patients. Clinical information used to be the exclusive province of the select few, but that is no longer the case, and Schiff sees it as a change that is beneficial to both patient and doctor.
Stage 2 of the federal Electronic Health Records Incentive Program is underway for providers who first reached Stage 1 in 2011. Although there will not be any official statistics available for several months, anecdotal evidence suggests that this new phase is off to a slow start.