Quality and Safety
athenahealth, which provides practice management, electronic health record and patient communication services to physician practices, has closed on the purchase of property in Northport, Maine, for $7.7 million, where it plans to establish a training center near another of its facilities.
Texas Health Resources received more than $19.5 million in Medicare incentive payments at the end of May for meeting first stage meaningful use. But according to Ferdinand Velasco, MD, vice president and CMIO, the heath system didn’t do it for the money.
Once electronic health records become nearly ubiquitous, the information within them will enable new applications and services geared toward better population health management, says National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari, MD.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has made available a free tool to simplify the reporting by physicians and practices of clinical quality measures for meaningful use.
Innovative tools and data that federal health agencies have released to the public can help healthcare providers meet meaningful use of electronic health records, says Todd Park, chief technology officer for the Department of Heath and Human Services. Speaking to an audience at the Government Health IT Conference on June 15, Park offered several examples.
Natural disasters are hitting the U.S. and abroad more often, it seems. In an attempt to connect after disasters hit, family, friends, rescuers, relief agencies, healthcare workers and others have turned to social media – which one expert says is the right tool for the job.
Vivek Kundra, the U.S. Chief Information Officer for the past two and a half years, will be stepping down from his role to serve a joint fellowship at Harvard University this fall.
Even doctors who have purchased and successfully implemented electronic health record systems did not always know what they were buying until they were up and running, ONC director Farzad Mostashari, MD, told an audience June 15 at the Government Health IT Conference in the nation's capital.
Unified communications (UC), which has become a hot issue among IT leaders and administrators, has recently been bolstered by video – and the "prognosis for its use in healthcare appears to hold promise," says one expert.
Healthcare organizations are embracing the need for information transparency to drive clinical transformation, but they are lacking the tools and capabilities to make data available in real-time to make it happen.