Quality and Safety
The University of Michigan Health System reports that a four-year Medicare physician group demonstration project, similar to an accountable care organization, has saved more than $15 million in the cost of care.
The Alaska eHealth Network, Alaska's statewide health information exchange, has tapped Santa Monica, Calif.-based Orion Health as its primary technology provider, with the purchase Orion's HIE solution. AeHN will deploy the technology as a hosted, software-as-a-service model.
The Marshfield Clinic is among 10 large physician groups participating in a Medicare demonstration project that have shown they can provide top quality of patient care while saving Medicare millions of dollars. Central to its performance, say Marshfield executives, is its electronic health record system.
Wolters Kluwer Health's Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), an academic publisher for medical students, has acquired Knoxville, Tenn.-based iCare Academic, the maker of iCare EMR, an educational program that simulates electronic medical records to prepare future nurses for 21st century healthcare.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is establishing several "communities of practice" to help its Beacon program establish clinical decision support technologies, care transitions programs, and pharmacy solutions and tools in healthcare improvement projects.
Two new publications from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are aimed at helping developers of software and computer systems for doctors' offices, clinics and hospitals make electronic health record systems easier to use.
The fate of a bill that would exempt doctors and other providers from complying with the Federal Trade Commission's Red Flags Rule now rests in the hands of President Obama.
GE Healthcare has announced a cost-effective, subscription-based library of online courses, through which nurses can receive continuing education credit in clinical care, leadership and development to help improve outcomes and lower costs.
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).
Seventy-five hospitals/medical centers have been named to Security magazine's "2010 Security 500" list, which recognizes organizations worldwide for best-managed security practices.