Electronic Health Records

The CommonWell Health Alliance and Carequality announced Dec. 13 they will be collaborating on efforts to boost data sharing among healthcare providers nationwide, committing to work together on advancing interoperability.

The provider tapped an EHR-based care management tool to cut readmissions by 30 percent, HIMSS said.

One of the largest healthcare providers in Hawaii, it's only the second two-time winner of the Enterprise Davies Award since the inception of the program in 1994.

Officials uncovered 'significant risks' and irregularities during rollout, raising concerns about a viable final product, a spokesperson says.

Defense Department is on track to rollout new electronic health records software in the Pacific Northwest later in 2016, and officials are calling the project a new beginning toward interoperable, safe and secure patient records.

Health IT giant Cerner Corp. has scored a $50.7 million data hosting contract from U.S. Department of Defense as part of its Defense Healthcare Management Systems Modernization, according to official documents. The DoD last year awarded Cerner and partner Leidos the $4.3 billion contract to deploy the new electronic health record for the U.S. military worldwide. Cerner won the contract over the objections of Amazon.com, Computer Sciences Corp., General Dynamics and IBM Corp., which appealed the decision and lost their case, documents showed. The DoD said that Cerner had made it clear to the government that the comapany does not allow connections to its managed services by any other commercial entity. In fact, Cerner's restrictions made it impossible for the Defense Department EHR's data to be hosted even by the DoD itself. [Also: DoD awards Cerner, Leidos, Accenture EHR contract] Cerner's EHR system also includes historical data, anonymized information from healthcare provider organizations that use the company's EHR and from the vendor's analytical models based on years of research and development. Had the DoD opted for a different company to host data, it would not have been able to use the Cerner historical data in conjunction with military EHR data and would have had to deal with a separate data setting, adding costs to the project, Pentagon officials said. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] The competing vendors' objections weren't all specified, but according to a report from FCW, one vendor had suggested the DoD could compel Cerner to share its data/modeling functions with a third-party hosting company. Another bidder suggested replacing Cerner's analytics modules with those from another vendor. But DoD said that would lead to cost redundancies. Some of these same vendors, such as IBM and CSC, competed for the initial DHMSM contract in 2015 and didn't protest the initial award to Leidos/Cerner. Cerner's suite of healthcare information systems will replace the DoD's legacy health IT system in its 55 hospitals and more than 350 clinics, as well as in ships, submarines and other military locations. In addition to Leidos, Cerner also aligned with Accenture, Henry Schein and a number of small business partners to serve the Military Health System and its 9.6 million beneficiaries. Intermountain Healthcare is also a strategic partner providing clinical governance of solutions and workflow. Jessica Davis contributed to this report. Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT

As he prepares to embark on one of the largest IT implementations in recent memory, Mayo Clinic CIO Cris Ross explains the thinking behind the choice of Epic for EHR and revenue cycle, and lays out his next steps.

IT security is complicated, made even more so by the dynamic nature of technology and the ever challenging threat landscape. It may be best to think of IT security as a chronic illness, a condition that requires ongoing treatment, testing, and re-evaluations.

The U.S. Coast Guard has awarded a $17 million contract to Science Applications International Corporation to provide services and operational support for USCG's Integrated Health Information System (IHiS), officials announced this month.

The U.S. Coast Guard awarded Epic Systems Corp. a $14 million contract to set up an electronic health record system with a broad array of state-of-the-art e-healthcare features.