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E-prescribing in the U.S. witnessed an 181 percent increase as 190 milion prescriptions were routed electronically in 2009 versus 68 million in 2008, according to a report from e-prescription network Surescripts, in its 2009 progess report on e-prescribing. Of the 190 million, more than four million e-prescriptions were routed to mail order pharmacies.
The Georgia Department of Community Health has been award $13 million by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to support the state’s effort to expand EHR use and create the infrastructure for health information exchange (HIE).
It is impossible to imagine a high-performing U.S. health system that does not take full advantage of the computing technology that has transformed virtually every other aspect of human endeavor, wrote National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal, MD, in a commentary published Feb. 4 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Written by Gina Narcisi
Organizations should act prior to the implementation of the new (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) HIPAA compliance guideline changes for 2010 and consistently monitor their facilities in order to make an easier transition and avoid the extended penalties that are now being proposed, said HIPAA privacy and security consult Grant Peterson during a Jan. 13 Webinar on the guidelines.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released four notices seeking contractors to assist and evaluate the administration of grant programs from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT that promote state health information exhanges and the creation of health IT training centers.
The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society believes there is much more to applaud than criticize concerning the release of interim final rules on meaningful use and qualified EHRs from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). However, the American Hospital Association noted that while health IT holds “great promise in improving care, widespread efforts toward adoption will be hindered unless key provisions in these rules are addressed.”
The nation’s capital can encourage physicians to buy EMR systems, but it is the vendors and hospitals that affiliate with physicians that will ultimately determine if they go electronic, according to a new report from healthcare market research publisher Kalorama Information.
In an attempt to meet the mission of the Health IT for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, the Office of the National Coordinator has reorganized its substructure components affecting all four of the original director-level offices.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued an interim final rule with request for comments to strengthen its enforcement of the rules promulgated under the modified version of HIPAA.
A defined framework for secondary data will need to be developed in order for more organizations to deploy health IT systems, according to a survey conducted between May and June and published by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
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With a push from the HITECH Act for facilities to install EMR software solutions, GE Healthcare has created a technology suite under its Centricity EMR solution and revenue cycle management tools that will increase the speed of the installation process.
The nonprofit organization Ohio Health Information Partnership (OHIP) has been awarded $43.3 million under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 to help make EHRs more widely available in Ohio.
Written by Justine Cadet
When the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) hosts its annual conference from March 1-4, at the Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, it is sure to be abuzz with conversations about the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment, the HITECH Act, and the subsequent meaningful use proposals and definitions.
Connecticut Attorney General (AG) Richard Blumenthal announced Wednesday that he is suing Health Net of Connecticut for failing to secure private patient medical records and financial information involving 446,000 Connecticut enrollees and promptly notify consumers exposed by the security breach.
U.S. hospitals are only halfway to qualifying for Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) draft rules, which could equate to EHR incentive payments for up-to-date hospitals, according to a survey released this week by IT company Computer Sciences’ (CSC) Healthcare Group.
David Blumenthal, MD, the national coordinator for health IT at the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS), on Friday announced plans to make available $60 million to support the development of Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP).
Incentives in the Health IT for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act represent an opportunity to accelerate the development, standardization and utilization of quality measures derived from clinical data in EHRs and from other clinical data sources, according to the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS).
The problem of developing security mechanisms needed for management protocols and policy management of personal health information (PHI) remains largely unsolved, according to Gerald Masson, PhD, director of the John Hopkins University Information Security Institute, who spoke at an assembly hearing of the Health IT Standards Committee on Nov. 19.
Healthcare technology developer QuadraMed has announced that three health systems in the U.S., and one Toronto-based healthcare organization have licensed its EHR product, QuadraMed CPR.
The National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) has sent a letter to the deputy director for health information privacy, Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, arguing that that expanded privacy rules could create significant problems for community pharmacies
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The use of health IT to reduce rehospitalizations will be welcome but also disruptive, said Stephen Jencks, an independent consultant in healthcare safety during a Feb. 24 webinar on the potential use of health IT to mitigate rehospitalizations, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
During the Health IT Standards Committee meeting on Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C., the Clinical Operations Workgroup sought to gather comments on proposed recommendations on implementation specifications for content exchange, vocabulary and code set standards for the Interim Final Rule of meaningful use.
In 2006, the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), a branch of the FDA, began examining the number of medical device reports they received. Over the past two years, the number of submitted reports has increased, sparking a demand for the CDRH to make a move to electronic reporting.
A new hospital breaking ground usually isn’t breaking news. But the vision of patient care at one new facility, tentatively named Palomar Medical Center West (PMC West), is currently illegal under California state law.