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The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality will dedicate nearly $2 million for the creation of the PCOR Clinical Decision Support Learning Network, aiming to address the barriers hindering the incorporation of patient-centered outcomes research into CDS tools.

The HIMSS Innovation Center is presenting a display to Florence Nightingale on the anniversary of her birthday, May 12, which is also Nursing Informatics Awareness Day. She was born in 1820. Nightingale is considered to be the founder of modern nursing, and many people in the field of healthcare look to her as having built the foundation for nursing informatics. The display features a letter signed by Florence Nightingale, as well as a book she owned, donated by Maureen Mitchell, RN, associate professor, graduate program director, School of Nursing, Cleveland State University. The items are on loan to HIMSS for two years. Learn more about Nighingale’s life and contributions to nursing: "Florence Nightingale’s focus on hygiene and cleanliness was vital to patient safety," said Joyce Sensmeier, RN, vice president, informatics, HIMSS North America. "Her methods resulted in drastically lowered mortality rates, and improved overall hospital performance. Her ideas and reforms changed healthcare on a global scale. HIMSS strives to emulate Nightingale’s dedication to patient care and the advancement of healthcare." Learn more about the background of the artifacts donated by Mitchell. Listen to Mitchell’s discussion about Florence Nightingale and nursing informatics.

Nashville-based Ardent Health Services, which operates hospitals in Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas, plans to unite all its hospitals and physician groups on an Epic Systems EHR platform.

After years of dwelling in the shadows of healthcare, the long-term and post-acute care industry may finally be ready to join its hospital colleagues in the IT spotlight.  

Nearly 90 percent of healthcare organizations have experienced data breaches, and for the second year in a row criminal attacks are the leading cause of breaches in healthcare, according to the Sixth Annual Benchmark Study on Privacy and Security of Healthcare Data.

Patricia Flatley Brennan, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and a former practicing nurse with a Ph.D. in industrial engineering, will take the lead as director at the National Library of Medicine. The NLM is the world's largest biomedical library and the producer of digital information services used by scientists, health professionals and members of the public worldwide. National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins, MD, announced the pick today. Brennan is expected to begin her new role in August 2016. "Patti brings her incredible experience of having cared for patients as a practicing nurse, improved the lives of homebound patients by developing innovative information systems and services designed to increase their independence, and pursued cutting-edge research in data visualization and virtual reality," Collins said in a statement. For seven years, Brennan worked in both critical care and psychiatric nursing. As Collins sees it, Brennan's combination of skills makes her ideally suited to lead the NLM in the era of precision medicine. She will take charge of the library as it becomes the epicenter for biomedical data science, not just at NIH, but across the biomedical research enterprise, he noted. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she is a professor at the School of Nursing and College of Engineering. She also leads the Living Environments Laboratory at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, which is developing new ways for effective visualization of high dimensional data. Brennan is recognized as a pioneer in developing information systems for patients.   She designed ComputerLink, an electronic network to reduce isolation and improve self-care among home care patients. She directed HeartCare, a web-based information and communication service that helps cardiac patients at home to recover faster, and with fewer symptoms. Brennan also directed Project HealthDesign, an initiative designed to stimulate the next generation of personal health records. She also conducts external evaluations of health information technology architectures, and works to repurpose engineering methods for healthcare. She received a master of science in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Following seven years of clinical practice in critical care nursing and psychiatric nursing, Brennan held several academic positions at Marquette University, Milwaukee; Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland; and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. NLM Acting Director Betsy L. Humphreys led the NLM over the past year, after Donald Lindberg, MD, retired having served more than 30 years. Twitter: @Bernie_HITN Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

LOS ANGELES — Building on several best practices and basic blocking and tackling of cybersecurity, healthcare organizations must also take a higher-level view to effectively address the problems of today. “Cybersecurity could not be more important. The breaches continue to happen, in the federal government, the private sector, it’s all over,” said Ronald Ross, a fellow and data scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology here on Monday at the Privacy and Security Forum. In addition to outlining the new security engineering guidance document that NIST released on May 4, 2016, which he described as “the most important, most transformational,” he has worked on at NIST, Ross offered that high-level solution. “Leadership, governance, and accountability will solve 90 percent of our cyberbreaches,” Ross said. Sign up for the Healthcare IT News Privacy & Security Update newsletter. Symantec health information technology officer David Finn agreed, saying that a strong leader with governance in place can then hold people accountable when those policies and procedures are not working. “Governance has to include the CEO, CFO, the board,” Finn added. “Because that’s the only way it works.” That approach should take into account: expenditures, insurance, regulatory compliance and “all the things that companies do to mitigate risk,” said PwC managing director Lisa Gallagher. Kyle Gilliland, director of information security at Huntington Hospital said that healthcare entities cannot simply buy security. “It starts with taking a look at your business needs and trying to build security into those,” Gilliland said. Ross also said cybersecurity needs to be proactive, not reactive, and that healthcare organizations should build security into every facet of their business — and explained that when NIST was working on the new document, it reached out to engineers who build bridges, planes and other large systems to understand and incorporate their best practices.  [Also: NIST to release new guidance for strengthening hospital cybersecurity] “When a plane crashes or a bridge collapses, the first thing we do is call the engineers to find out why it happened,” Ross explained. In the event of a data breach, however, healthcare organizations typically collect more threat intelligence, rather than actually understanding their own weaknesses to improve upon those. NIST’s new guidelines can help lead entities in that direction, though Ross said regardless of which framework a hospital chooses, the best tactic is to pick one the organization understands, is comfortable with, and can execute against. “The only way to improve security is to architect and engineer your system,” Ross said. “You have to use engineering techniques to limit the damage adversaries can do.” Twitter: @SullyHIT Email the writer: tom.sullivan@himssmedia.com Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

(SPONSORED) There is an unprecedented convergence occurring between healthcare and technology – and telemedicine is an increasingly important initiative in the connected health market.

Two southeast Missouri healthcare organizations – SoutheastHEALTH, in Cape Giradeau, and Missouri Delta Medical Center, in Sikeston – will each install a Cerner Millennium EHR system. The platform provides an integrated digital record of a patient's health history, including clinical and financial data. Also, by using the online patient portal, patients will be able to securely message their physicians, schedule appointments and access their health history. "SoutheastHEALTH prides itself on being a high-tech, high-touch hospital focused on making a positive impact, and the EHR will help fulfill that mission," said Ken Bateman, president and CEO of SoutheastHEALTH, in a statement. Besides transitioning to Millennium, Missouri Delta Medical Center will also deploy Cerner's CommunityWorks technology, a prescriptive and remote-hosted IT platform tailored to support community healthcare organizations that provide care to rural communities. [Also: Cerner taps John Glaser to lead EHR company's population health efforts] More than half of Cerner clients that are live with the CommunityWorks model have achieved Stage 6 of the HIMSS Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model. "As a rural community hospital, we have been recognized with top performing patient satisfaction scores and clinical process of care measures," said Jason Schrumpf, president and CEO of Missouri Delta Medical Center, in a statement. Both organizations expect to benefit from advanced interoperability capabilities, which will enable the transfer of patient data between the organizations and among health systems across the country. Twitter: @Bernie_HITN Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

"With respect to some business practices: It's time to lead, follow or get out of the way," CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt said at the 2016 Health Datapalooza in Washington, D.C. "If you want to lead the way with innovations that help consumers, great; if you want to follow by using established standards for data and measurement and technology, also great," he added. "If you have a business model which relies on silo-ing data, not using standards or not allowing data to follow the needs of patients – pick a new business model or pick a new business." On the heels of the April announcement of the proposed MACRA ruling, Slavitt spoke to healthcare innovators, industry leaders and developers early Tuesday evening. And while he had no further news to share with the specifics of the proposal, it was clear his intentions were firm. "What Vice President Biden said should stick with us: As taxpayers, we did not spend $35 billion so companies could build their own silos," Slavitt said. "At this stage, there's no room for business practices that don’t match the need of patients." On the forefront of Slavitt's thoughts were patients with the least access to care and an "obsession with a plight of the independent physician." However, "physicians are baffled by what feels like the 'physician data paradox.' They're overloaded on data entry and yet rampantly under-informed," Slavitt said. And the majority of providers are seeing a chasm between the time needed to invest in making the IT work and the actual positive results within their practices. "Technology isn’t doing the things we know it can," he added. "Help us make smarter decisions, reduce our wasted time, help us communicate or understand what to expect next." While these issues are troubling, according to Slavitt, the solution isn't the need for more IT inventions. But rather five crucial steps to initiate change in the healthcare industry: the massive release of data; changing incentives to reward providers for patient outcomes; creating "core" quality measures across all payers; advancing interoperability; and the proposed replacement of meaningful use. "These steps are designed to make it easier for you to innovate, to open up competition and to move the focus from designing around regulations, to allowing you to design around patients’ and physicians’ needs," Slavitt said. "The opportunity for you to transform healthcare into an information industry has never been more ripe or more urgent." Twitter: @JessieFDavis Email the writer: jessica.davis@himssmedia.com Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn