Athenahealth parses practice management platform to offer stand-alone EHR product
MassDevice
“Athenahealth Inc. (NSDQ:ATHN) now offers electronic health records service athenaClinicals as a stand-alone system.
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Articles
Can Video Games Play A Serious Role In Medicine?
Ken Congdon, Healthcare Technology Online
“Last week, a survey of University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin-Madison medical students was published by BMC Medical Education. According to the survey, an overwhelming majority of these students (80%) liked the idea of using video games as a tool to teach them medical techniques and practices. Few should really be surprised by these results.
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ONC poised to announce temporary certification bodies
Diana Manos, Healthcare IT News
“The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) will announce the names of the authorized testing and certification bodies (ATCB) “soon,” according to Carol Bean, ONC’s division director for certification and testing.
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Expert: Providers must make IT investments on their own, have new implementation strategies
Molly Merrill, Healthcare IT News
“With government incentives only offsetting EHR costs by about 15 to 20 percent, providers should not only be prepared to make a significant investment in IT, but should also consider a “radical new approach to IT,” say the authors of a new study.
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Survey Spotlights Need to Secure Patient Information from Unauthorized Access
Shawn Riley, HealthTechnica
“Imprivata®, Inc., the company that simplifies and secures access to patient information, today announced the results of its third annual online national survey that examines IT trends in healthcare.
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Costs of EMR Certification for Meaningful Use And Impact on EMR Vendors
John, EMR and HIPAA
“Long time readers will know that I’m not a fan of EMR certification. It seems quite pointless since it provides no assurance to the doctor of anything of value. EMR Certification doesn’t ensure a higher implementation success rate. EMR Certification doesn’t improve patient care. EMR Certification doesn’t improve doctor’s bottom line.
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The Mashup of Informatics, eHealth, and Social Media in Healthcare
Richard Booth, Nursing Ideas
“Over the last decade in nursing, the discipline of informatics has seen and witnessed some exponential changes. The word ‘informatics’ had been used in practice and literature since the mid-1970s, and was picked up by nursing in the early 1980s.
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More EMR, less superhighway, says Canadian Medical Association
Alan Brookstone, Canadian EMR
“The Canadian Medical Association’s recent Health Care Transformation in Canada report calls for a fundamental change in the way healthcare technology is developed. The CMA wants information technology development to shift from building an information superhighway for healthcare to practical applications of technology at the point-of-care.
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Patients in Turkey use mobile video to consult doctors
Ideaworks
“One of Turkey’s main mobile operators has joined forces with a leading mhealth provider to give smartphone customers video links to doctors.
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Open Notes Project – Right Thing or Wrong Question
John W. Sharp, eHealth
“The discussion of having doctors notes on one’s care readily available electronically was stimulated by a recent New York Times article titled, Should Patients Read the Doctor’s Notes? Roni Zeiger of Google Health challenges whether this is the right question.
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Alstublieft, uw dossier!
Jaco van Duivenboden, ICTZorgen
“Als ik naar de garage ga voor een onderhoudsbeurt, krijg ik van de dealer altijd een keurige waslijst met wat er allemaal mis was. Een factuur, met daarop een hele lading termen die ik, a-technisch als ik ben, zelden begrijp. Als ik iets niet snap, vraag ik gewoon wat er bedoeld wordt met “vervanging motorblok”.
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Will the ARRA money be worth the effort?
Paul Roemer, Healthcare IT Strategy
“I disagree with a few of the comments in the McKinsey paper. First, the paper begins with two comments, neither of which is accurate; “Mandated upgrades to healthcare IT…”, and “New regulations require…” Lest we forget, having an EHR is optional—choosing not to have one is probably not a smart business decision, but the decision is yours, not Washington’s.
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Insurers Take Lead in EHR Implementation
Nathan Golia, Insurance Technology
“When the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services announced its final rules and regulations for meaningful use of electronic health records in July, several health insurers launched programs to encourage EHR adoption among physicians.
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Health IT testing procedures issued
Joseph Conn, ModernHealthcare
“The federally supported National Institute of Standards and Technology has published a set of procedures for testing health information technology as part of a certification program that will determine healthcare providers’ eligibility for government subsidies for the purchase of electronic health-record systems.
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VA sees problems in open-source development for VistA
Alice Lipowicz, FederalComputerWeek
“The Veterans Affairs Department sees advantages in using open-source software to modernize its Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) system, but it anticipates several problems if it takes that step.
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EMR Question and Answer: Local Server EMR vs Web Based (SaaS) EMR
John, EMR and HIPAA
“This is one of the most heated questions you can ask EMR vendors when considering an EMR. For an EMR vendor, choosing one or the other becomes like a religion. My personal belief is that either model is reasonable. Certainly the SaaS EMR people are correct that web based systems are the major trend in technology and that EVERYTHING is going web based. However, it is also true that there are some things you can do with a client server EMR that still aren’t as effective with a web based system (ie. complex document workflow).
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Mass. General EHR search pilot points way to better quality of care
Don Fluckinger, Health IT Pulse
“A few of us old souls can remember the early days of the World Wide Web, when you had to remember — or worse yet, guess — the URLs of sites you wanted to get to. “Ford.com” or “Whitehouse.gov” were simple to divine via the Mosaic browser’s address bar, but some of the .net and other locations weren’t so intuitive. Early search engines could find things — eventually — but search results were larded with off-topic ones as well. Worst of all, site content (blinking text!) was so primitive back then that using the Web could be a colossal waste of time. For many early-1990s Web sites, it was like Gertrude Stein said, “There is no there there.”
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Study: Only Advanced Electronic Medical Records Reduce ER Time
Katherine Hobson, WSJ Health Blog
“What kind of facility is more likely to get you in and out of the emergency room quickly — one with paper records or one with electronic ones?
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Electronic Medical Records and the Efficiency of Hospital Emergency Departments
Furukawa MF. Medical Care Research and Review, 68(1)
This study examined the relationship between electronic medical records (EMR) sophistication and the efficiency of U.S. hospital emergency departments (EDs). Using data from the 2006 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, survey-weighted ordinary least squares regressions were used to estimate the association of EMR sophistication with ED throughput and probability a patient left without treatment.
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AHRQ: Health IT, incentives spur practice-based population health
CMIO
“Practice-based population health (PBPH) may become a more widely viable option for primary care providers, according to a report released last month by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
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