UnitedHealth Group will invest $10 million to help California’s critical access hospitals improve their health IT systems and adopt EHRs.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has announced three sets of grants and cooperative agreements, totaling nearly $17 million for patient-centered outcomes research.

The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) has launched a non-profit, wholly owned subsidiary organization, called the Global Health Informatics Partnership, to serve as an international center for collaborative initiatives on healthcare informatics.

While diagnostic errors are encountered in every specialty and are generally lowest (less than five percent) for certain specialties that rely on visual pattern recognition and interpretation (e.g., radiology, pathology, dermatology), error rates in specialties that rely more on data gathering and the combination of different elements for a conclusive diagnosis are higher (10 to 15 percent), according to a September article published in the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Advisory.

The CT Colonography (CTC) Coalition has called on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) to reconsider its recommendation regarding virtual colorectal cancer screening, following the statement issued by the task force maintaining that further research is still required to make a conclusive recommendation regarding CTC.

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) has launched Quality 101, an online resource for the basics and metrics of quality measurement and improvement.

The Canadian government has invested more than $911,000 to support medical and pharmaceutical research at Canada's National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics--TRIUMF--through the Western Diversification Program.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued a reminder to healthcare providers, health plans, clearinghouses and vendors about the approaching January 2011 compliance date for testing transaction standards.

Weno Healthcare has submitted its application to become an Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) authorized certification and testing body (ATCB) in an effort to increase overall adoption for certified EHR technology.

The American Registry of Radiologic Technologists (ARRT) has released a change to its ARRT Rules and Regulations, stating that individuals whose registration was dropped more than five years after their CE probation end date will no longer be required to re-enroll in and complete an educational program in order to reinstate their registered technologist designation.

On average, hospital stays for patients with healthcare-acquired infections were 19.2 days longer and the cost was nearly $43,000 greater than stays without infections, according to a statistical brief released by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

A personal health record (PHR) embedded in mobile communication devices--or mPHR--is the “killer app” that may change the game for providers, consumers and payors, according to an issue brief from consulting firm Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, based in Washington, D.C.

The adoption of basic or comprehensive EHR systems by U.S. hospitals increased from 8.7 percent in 2008 to 11.9 percent in 2009, but only 2 percent of hospitals met the federal meaningful use standards needed to qualify for government financial incentives, according to an article published Aug. 26 in an advance online edition of Health Affairs.

The Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) has announced its support for clinical research to determine the safety and effectiveness of interventional treatments for patients diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) through a position statement published in the September edition of the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology.

IT-based programs can improve cardiovascular disease management and patient empowerment, but must be accompanied by supportive social and political environments and active patient and clinician engagement, according to an article published online Aug. 24 in PLoS Medicine.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) has granted Dynasil seven of its phase-II small business innovation research (SBIR) projects awards, totaling $6.2 million.

The EMR purchasing process has matured, there are fewer EMR pioneers and buyers are savvier; so today's EMR projects aren't likely to go way over budget, according to a report from healthcare market research firm KLAS. However, EMR customers may face unexpected costs down the line.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DoJ) have issued revised Horizontal Merger Guidelines that outline how the federal antitrust agencies evaluate the likely competitive impact of mergers and whether those mergers comply with U.S. antitrust law, which could affect future acquisitions and mergers among hospitals.

The University of Maryland, based in College Park, Md. has received a $1.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation to acquire a superconducting 800 MHz Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer to conduct investigations of biomolecular structure.

Center for Diagnostic Imaging, an outpatient radiology imaging service based in Minneapolis, has opened the Indy West Center, an outpatient medical imaging and image-guided procedure center in Avon, Ind.