Meaningful Use

I spoke recently with Dr. Thomas Jones, chairman of the Health Record Bank's Principles Committee, who will be presenting at the Healthcare and Information Management Systems Society annual conference in February in Orlando, Fla.

With many of them citing CPOE capabilities as a major hurdle, the number of CIOs who expect their hospitals to qualify early for stimulus funding for EHR implementation has dropped by half, according to a recent survey by the College of Health Information Management Executives (CHIME).

The White House has called for a "universal exchange language" to enable healthcare providers to share health information in real time, in order to modernize and coordinate diagnosis and treatment while incorporating privacy and security of personal data.

I'm often asked how healthcare reform will impact IT planning and implementation over the next few years.

Coming off of my Facebook-focused blog from yesterday, I'll turn to the recent leak of State Dept. documents on WikiLeaks.

Newt Gingrich and Dr. Kamal Thapar wrote an interesting opinion piece in AOL News on Monday, Dec. 6th, about electronic medical information.

A Department of Health and Human Services advisory panel wants feedback from the public about concepts it has developed for clinical quality measures for meaningful use in 2013 and 2015.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is providing grants to states in order to fund health information exchange breakthroughs in five challenging areas that will promote sharing of patient records nationwide.

The emergency department information system market - worth $110 million in 2010 - will grow by more than 30 percent in 2011 due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), according to Millennium Research Group.

The American Hospital Association is urging the Office of the National Coordinator to relax its rules on meaningful use so EHRs do not have to be certified against all 24 criteria, arguing that the requirement is inconsistent since hospitals are required to report on 19 measures.