I like the New York Times: its coverage of world events, American politics, and technology; the book review; its sports writers; the editorial and commentary section. I know that every time I sit down with that newspaper, I'm going to learn something new.

I admire that paper so much, in fact, that I take special pride when Healthcare IT News scoops it – as we did in July.

Actually, we scooped their July story in November, 2004. Here's what happened.

The July 21 Times story detailed plans from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to release the open source VistA electronic medical records system, first developed for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In her article, Times writer Gina Kolata briefly summarized the benefits of an electronic records system, and duly noted low adoption rates among U.S. physicians – attributable to the high cost of commercial systems.

That was about to change, Kolata told her readers. "Now, however, Medicare, which says the lack of electronic records is one of the biggest impediments to improving health care, has decided to step in. In an unprecedented move, it said it planned to announce that it would give doctors – free of charge – software to computerize their medical practices."

Unprecedented move? About to announce?

This story sounded awfully familiar to Healthcare IT News senior editor Caroline Broder, who spends hours each day monitoring news from consumer and trade publications, and who maintains our daily and weekly e-news services.

A quick check of the HealthcareITNews.com archives turned up 17 stories on VistA, including one by senior editor Fred Bazzoli that appeared in the November 2004 edition. That one was titled, "VA EHR tweaked for private practice."

Here's what Bazzoli wrote in his lead paragraph:"WASHINGTON — The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is working at a rapid pace to bring a full-bodied electronic health record system, already in use in the veterans health system, to physician offices.

"Work is under way on adapting VistA, the electronic health record of the Veteran's Health Administration, for availability in July 2005. Developers are currently recasting the software, to be distributed as VistA-Office EHR, to run on Windows operating systems."

Bazzoli quoted Cynthia Wark, acting deputy director for the information systems group of the office of clinical standards and quality for CMS, as saying ""The goal is to make it available free of charge to the public… We're going to make it more user-friendly. Some changes need to be made to the registration process, because VistA was set up to work with veterans facilities. The intent is to keep the underlying technology the same and make modifications as needed to make it installable in an office setting."

Bazzoli, in other words, scooped the Times by eight months. Ours is a fast-paced industry. We at Healthcare IT News believe that our readers can't suspend decisions about software implementations until bureaucrats make "official" announcements.

That's why editors like Bazzoli and Broder – based in Chicago and Washington, D.C., respectively – are working on important stories long before a press release arrives in an inbox.

We may not have the "all the news that's fit to print," but I hope we have all the news you, our readers, care about.

If not, please feel free to drop me a line (jack.beaudoin@medtechpublishing.com) and let me know what we're missing.