Meaningful Use

Telehealth used to be something few people knew about, or understood. Today, it is fast taking its place as a major aspect of healthcare, according to experts at the National eHealth Collaborative's Technology Crossroads Conference in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 27.

Mergers and acquisitions can be hazardous to a company's health, industry experts often warn. In the realm of health IT, this caveat has proved no exception.

Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record (EHR) incentive payments are estimated to have reached $9.245 billion to 177,100 physicians and hospitals through November since the program's inception and are anticipated to reach $10 billion by the end of the year (Healthcare IT News went to press before the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) posted final figures in late December).

The recommendations for Stage 3 of meaningful use are now out for comment. Coincidentally or not, there is a new degree of pessimism about when health IT interoperability will ever be achieved.

At the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology 2012 Annual Meeting, held Dec. 12 in Washington, DC, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) told attendees that interoperability is a lynch pin for health IT advancement, and it is currently lacking.

A report issued Nov. 29 by the Office of the Inspector General calling for more oversight of the meaningful use program has been mostly well-received by stakeholders. Doctors, however, are concerned about the burden of pre-payment audits.

A new report from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) might not entirely spill the meaningful use apple cart, but it certainly isn't going to make things any easier.

Barry Blumenfeld, MD, MS, CIO of MaineHealth and Maine Medical Center, discusses rollout of the Epic EMR, the slow adoption of voice recognition, and his relief over the recent presidential election for the state of healthcare IT.

One week after unveiling its Patient Engagement Framework, the National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC) has launched an online tool meant to help health organizations track their progress on involving patients in their care.

Sixty-nine percent of U.S. primary care physicians reported using electronic medical records in 2012 -- up from 46 percent in 2009, according to findings from the 2012 Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey. But in the U.S., just 11 percent of physicians said they had referral information available when it was needed.