electronic health records (EHR)

See the following -

Congress is its own roadblock to interoperability

Marla Durben Hirsch | Fierce EMR | April 8, 2015

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has received a large number of comments on its draft interoperability road map. Some commenters have praised it; others have offered criticisms. Yet, we can't ignore that ONC is not alone at the interoperability drawing board. Both the CommonWell Health Alliance and Carequality, Healtheway's interoperability initiative, are forging ahead with their own initiatives. There also are the health information exchanges, with their different rules, operating models and governance structures.

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CORAnet Solutions, Inc. Launches Certified PHR Applications for Allscripts

Press Release | CORAnet Solutions | April 28, 2015

CORAnet Solutions, Inc. announced it has received certification on several innovative applications via the Allscripts Developer Program (ADP) for users of Allscripts Professional EHR™, Allscripts TouchWorks® EHR and Allscripts Sunrise Acute Care™. The applications, CORAVault (ambulatory) and CORALink (emergency), are going to be featured in a webinar on April 30th. The webinar, which will start at 12:00 PM ET, can be joined here. CORAnet Solutions’ mobile application, CORAVault™, provides access to disparate electronic health records, CCD, CCR, and HL7 files securely from different locations such as hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and physician practices. The CORAnet server consolidates and organizes medical data  as a single personal health record (PHR) secured with 256-bit encryption to the patient’s smart phone, laptop and/or tablet where medical data are stored and accessible anytime, anywhere – both online and offline.

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Critical Access & Small Hospitals Falling Behind in Meaningful Use

Joseph Goedert | HealthData Management | August 6, 2013

A study from Mathematica Policy Research and the American Hospital Association, published in Health Affairs, finds many critical access hospitals and other smaller hospitals are at risk to fail achieving meaningful use and face Medicare payment penalties in 2015. Read More »

Crony Capitalist Epic Systems Gets Rich by Manipulating Stimulus Timeline

Pejman Yousefzadeh | All Fired Up Media | February 27, 2012

Newspapers and bloggers have spilled a lot of real and digital ink in recent months over the Department of Energy’s controversial stimulus-created loan guarantee program, the now-defunct green tech firm Solyndra, and its wealthy benefactor/Obama campaign bundler George Kaiser. Too few are paying attention to the government’s push for widespread health information technology adoption, funded in large part by the stimulus bill, and key industry players exerting influence over the policy process for personal benefit. If you haven’t yet heard of Wisconsin-based Epic Systems and its CEO Judith Faulkner, pay attention.

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Darwinian Health IT: Only well-designed EHRs will survive

Myopic efforts to meet certification and compliance requirements have added functionality and effort tangential to the care of the patient. Clinicians feel like they are working for the system instead of it working for them. The best EHRs are focused on helping physicians take care of patients, with Meaningful Use and ICD-10 derivative of patient care and documentation. Read More »

Data Blocking Hampers Interoperability, ONC Says

Greg Slabodkin | Health Data Management | April 10, 2015

According to ONC, complaints and other evidence described in the 39-page report “suggest that some persons and entities are interfering with the exchange or use of electronic health information in ways that frustrate the goals of the HITECH Act and undermine broader healthcare reforms.” ONC’s report provides criteria for identifying and distinguishing electronic health information blocking from other barriers to interoperability, and details current and proposed actions...

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Defense Health shoring up IT ahead of EHR move

Amber Corrin | Federal Times | February 6, 2015

As the Defense Health Agency moves forward in pursuit of a new electronic health records system, officials there also are overhauling IT to become a more agile, responsive organization. Top priorities for the 2015-2016 time frame include the EHR, enterprise consolidation, interoperability with the Veterans Administration, application rationalization and the standardization of enterprise activities, according to Dave Bowen, DHA CIO and director of healthcare IT. Read More »

Demand For Health IT Workers High

Bernie Monegain | Healthcare IT News | August 22, 2014

'The lack of local qualified health IT workers, whether real or not, is a very real concern for many.'...

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Digital Health Funding Is Up, But Growth Slows, Says Rock Health

Ki Mae Heussner | GigaOM | June 21, 2013

Funding for digital health startups is on the rise, but growth is slowing overall, startup accelerator Rock Health said in a mid-year report on the industry. Read More »

DirectTrust Reports Strong Growth in Direct Transactions, Number of Direct Exchange Addresses and Users

Press Release | DirectTrust | January 20, 2016

DirectTrust today announced continued record growth in the number of health care organizations using Direct exchange services during 2015, as well as an upsurge in the number of Direct addresses and transactions nationwide. DirectTrust is a non-profit health care industry alliance created by and for participants in the Direct exchange network used for secure, interoperable exchange of personal health information (PHI) between provider organizations, and between provider and patients, for the purpose of improved coordination of care...

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Docs Working with Regional Extension Centers Attest to MU Obstacles

Marla Durben Hirsch | FierceEMR | February 15, 2012

Nearly three-fourths (74 percent) of physicians working with regional extension centers (RECs) to attest to the Meaningful Use of their electronic health records have encountered problems in doing so, according to the RECs that have reported the issue to U.S. Department of Health & Human Services' Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). Read More »

Doctors like EHRs even less than they did five years ago

Jack McCarthy | Healthcare IT News | August 13, 2015

But do the clinicians, physicians, nurses and specialists actually using the software like EHRs any more than they did five years ago? No, they do not, at least according to the results of a study published by the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians' AmericanEHR division. Physicians, rather, have are grown increasingly dissatisfied with their electronic health records software during the last five years.

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Doctors Soon To Be Awash In Penalty Tsunami

Diana Manos | Government Health IT | June 23, 2014

Anyone under the impression that doctors don’t like technology in general might be mistaken. Rather, what many share distaste for is meaningful use. Read More »

Don’t forget Obamacare’s electronic medical records wreck

Michelle Malkin | Michellemalkin.com | October 23, 2013

The White House finally acknowledged the spectacular public disaster of Obamacare’s Internet exchange infrastructure during Monday’s Rose Garden infomercial. But President Shamwow and his sales team are AWOL on the bureaucratic ravages of the federal electronic medical records mandate. Modernized data collection is a worthy goal, of course. But distracted doctors are seeing “more pixels than patients,” Dr. DiNubile observes, and the EMR edict is foisting “dangerous user-unfriendly technology” on physicians and patients.

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EHR Business Environment Must Change to Achieve Interoperability

Greg Slabodkin | Health Data Management | February 4, 2015

The main challenges for the nation’s health IT interoperability are not technical but business related. That’s the word from former National Coordinators for Health IT speaking in a panel session on Tuesday at ONC’s Annual Meeting in Washington. Farzad Mostashari, M.D., former National Coordinator for HIT and currently CEO of start-up Aledade which partners with independent primary care physicians, warned that business practices among some electronic health records vendors are inhibiting the sharing of health information by restricting information exchange with users of other EHR products.

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