Interoperability
A rural Montana hospital has filed suit against a big name electronic health record system provider alleging the company violated its contract by both failing to install an EHR system by the set deadline and not providing a system that meets 2014 federal meaningful use criteria.
With Congress working on a long-term Medicare "SGR fix" in the recent short-term budget deal, lawmakers laid down seeds for addressing issues such as value-based reimbursement and EHR compatibility.
The push for meaningful use Stage 3 has reached a point where a confluence of power structures are ready for more breakthroughs -- hence, the impetus for collaboration among IHE USA, ONC and S&I Framework, officials from these groups say.
As we close out 2013 and look forward to a fresh new year, we present you with 10 stories that had you, our readers, most captivated. They inlcude news about IRS troubles and EHR breakdown at a major hospital system. Bad news seems compelling. But so does good news, in the form of lists.
Driven by increasing demand for clinical information technology and administrative tools, the North American healthcare IT market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 7.4 percent, set to reach $31.3 billion by 2017 from $21.9 billion in 2012, according to a new report from Research and Markets.
"In 2003, fewer than 5 percent of hospitals in the U.S. had any form of electronic records," said David Brailer, MD, who became the nation's first "heath information czar" in 2004. "A smaller percentage of doctors' offices had them, probably less than 1 percent. It was something everyone knew was inevitable, but the fire had not been lit," he tells Healthcare IT News.
Rebecca Coelius, MD, ONC's Medical Officer for Innovations, talks with Bernie Monegain about how ONC defines innovation and is driving advancements in areas such as Blue Button and standards of interoperability.
HIMSS is working with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through HHS' Innovator in Residence program, to develop a strategy for nationwide patient data matching.
Google users may have come across the protected health information of nearly 33,000 individuals over the last two months, after a health system's security gaffe left patient data exposed online.
There's one word that can aptly describe the mobile health market in its entirety. Nascent. And it's been lingering in this stage for years, said industry officials at the 2013 mHealth Summit this week. So, what's finally going to move the market forward? For many, it involves taking a little closer look at history.