Meaningful Use

A new white paper from HIMSS Analytics, sponsored by Lantronix, surveyed 825 healthcare organizations to explore the progress of interfacing medical devices with the EMR.

The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics implemented an online patient portal for seven of its departments in July 2010. To date, 35 percent of the patients have accessed their medical information through the portal.

In West Texas, where unemployment is at 2 percent, the popular chain Chili's had to close some of its restaurants because there were not enough employees to fill the jobs. Imagine what it's like for a healthcare system in that part of the country to recruit IT staff, says Gary L. Barnes, CIO of Medical Center Health System in Odessa, Tex.


The regional extension centers (RECs) were a main focus for healthcare IT stakeholders this year.

The proposed meaningful use criteria up for public comment reflected “thoughtful policy,” David Brailer, MD, told Healthcare IT News shortly after the government made the rule public on Dec. 30, 2009.

While the United States was enjoying its national Thanksgiving holiday last Thursday, officials of London, Ontario, hospitals were busy putting out the fires created by an IT architect who blew the whistle on outsourcing talks with U.S.-based Cerner Corp.

Radiologists are eligible for meaningful use government incentives, and Belgium-based Agfa HealthCare announced Monday at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America that it would help its customers achieve meaningful use with its IMPAX RIS technology.

In pinning down the reason Canada has been slow to adopt EMRs in an interview with a Canadian newspaper, Richard Alvarez, president and CEO of Canada Health Infoway, pointed to a lack of collaboration among the many stakeholders. He’s absolutely right.

A survey by Black Book Rankings, a division of the market research firm Brown-Wilson Group, ranks the top EMR vendors for 2011 based on key performance indicators including meaningful use.

There's an interesting article in a recent issue of the Connecticut Mirror about the impact of EMRs on the patient-doctor relationship. It starts out with one patient telling a solo-practicing general surgeon that she's glad the surgeon doesn't have an EMR because the physicians spend more time on the computer than with the patient.