The Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday awarded $137 million to 50 states – and Guam – to strengthen prevention efforts and to improve public health. Many of the awards include a health IT component, such as immunization information technologies and registries.
Bilingual staff have become a valuable asset to healthcare organizations. They’re often pulled from their daily responsibilities to assist nurses, physicians, techs and other support staff in communicating with limited English proficient (LEP) patients.
To help ensure that patients are properly vaccinated, UPMC has created one of the first systems in the state to not only provide real-time, electronic reporting to Pennsylvania's immunizations registry but to also allow UPMC's clinicians to view the state's vaccine data for each patient.
Veteran HIMSS Virtual Conference & Expo attendees will find returning industry-leading healthcare IT companies in the Exhibit Hall showcasing their latest products and services.
"Meaningful use" has become a household term in the healthcare IT world. Some 50,000 eligible providers have signed up to participate so far in the most ambitious U.S. health IT adoption program to date.
Maine Primary Care Association (MPCA), which represents the state's safety-net community health centers, has launched a quality initiative that puts information technology at its core.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT could include in the requirements for the next stage of meaningful use some functions that would build toward the comprehensive information exchange system that a presidential commission recommended last year.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT announced Wednesday that providers and public health agencies in Minnesota and Rhode Island have begun securely exchanging health information online as part of the Direct Project.
The Office of the National Coordinator will start real-world testing of clinical information exchanges between healthcare providers using "NHIN Direct" standards and services in late December or early January, according to the connectivity project's director.
The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) announced Wednesday the six winners of its 2010 Davies Awards of Excellence, which recognize the use of electronic health records to improve care.
CareSpark, a nonprofit regional health information organization (RHIO) serving Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, is proving the value of health information exchanges through several projects that rely on its provider registry.
The Health IT Policy Committee has created a task force to pursue the use of directories across state HIEs to support provider and patient look-up as well as to enhance public health reporting.
On July 13, 2010, the government released amended meaningful use objectives and measures for eligible professionals, hospitals and critical access hospitals.
Across the nation, in communities large and small, health information technology innovators are boldly leading the way toward the adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs).
The government has released the names of the 15 communities across the country from Maine to Hawaii that will serve as models for the broad use of healthcare information technology under a $220 million program aimed at improving care and efficiency – and creating new jobs.
Now that the Interim Final Rule (Initial Set of Standards, Implementation Specifications, and Certification Criteria for Electronic Health Record Technology) and the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Medicare and Medicaid Programs Electronic Health Record Incentive Program) have been published, we can all finalize our policy and technology strategies for achieving Certification and Meaningful Use in our organizations and communities.
Like many complex healthcare systems, BIDMC does not have a one size fits all solution for ambulatory records. Although we favor integrated systems, we need to achieve interoperability via interfaces between two EHRs - a home built web-based product called webOMR and a commercial hosted version of eClinicalWorks.
Recently, clinicians have asked me "why should I implement my organization's preferred EHR when I've found a less expensive vendor that promises meaningful use?"
