Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act

See the following -

Health IT Security, FHIR Focus of ONC Secure API Server Challenge

Elizabeth Snell | HealthIT Security | October 10, 2017

ONC is challenging healthcare stakeholders to build secure Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) servers to improve health IT security and ensure that secure FHIR options are available in the future. The Secure API Server Showdown Challenge will ideally “identify unknown security vulnerabilities in the way open source FHIR servers are implemented,” ONC Office of Standards and Technology Director Steven Posnack, MS, MHS, wrote in a blog post...

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Healthcare Technology Costs Top $32,500 per Physician

Press Release | Medical Group Management Association | August 10, 2016

As they move to digitize their practices and patient medical records, healthcare organizations across the country continue to grapple with significant increases in information technology costs. According to new data from Medical Group Management Association, physician-owned multispecialty practices spent more than $32,500 per full-time physician on information technology equipment, staff, maintenance, and other related expenses in 2015...

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Healthy Skepticism – Jared Sinclair's Critique of HealthKit as Both an iOS Developer and Registered Nurse

Of the many new APIs announced at WWDC this summer, HealthKit has been particularly thought-provoking for me. At the risk of sounding like that guy, I think I have a somewhat priviledged perspective of HealthKit. There can’t be that many former registered nurses who’ve switched to iOS app development and tried to start a healthcare data company.

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HIMSS13: What Will Happen When The Health IT Boom Ends?

Kyle Murphy | EHR Intelligence | February 26, 2013

With HIMSS13 less than a week away, much of the news surrounding the annual event centers on new products and services health IT developers and vendors are looking to sell to healthcare organizations and providers with the promise of improving patient care and ostensibly reducing costs... Read More »

Inside The Struggle For Electronic Health Record Interoperability

Greg Otto | FedScoop | August 20, 2014

Over the past few months, stories have popped up chronicling doctors’, clinicians’ or other health care providers’ headaches moving to and/or accessing EHRs. The chorus of complaints has led the Senate Appropriations Committee to submit language in a draft bill that calls for a report from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) on what “the challenges and barriers” are to EHR interoperability.” Read More »

Is The Presidential Election Healthcare's Own Perfect Storm For EHRs?

Lee Barrett | Government Health IT | November 2, 2012

When two opposing forces collide, the results can be devastating. Earlier this week Hurricane Sandy — a warm air, warm-water storm moving up from the south — met up with a bitterly cold nor’easter, creating a monster storm that battered the East Coast. On the eve of the presidential election, healthcare leaders cannot help but wonder if the industry facing its own perfect storm. Read More »

M&A Can Be Hazardous To Health IT

Erin McCann | Healthcare IT News | January 1, 2013

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) can be hazardous to a company's health, industry experts often warn. In the realm of health IT, this caveat has proved no exception. Read More »

Most RECs Plan To Stay Open For Business

Mike Miliard | Healthcare IT News | May 2, 2014

Federal funding for most regional extension centers is set to dry up by late this year or early next, but most of them still plan to keep their doors open, according to the 2014 HIMSS Regional Extension Center Survey...

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Mostashari: Slow But Steady Interoperability Progress

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | June 11, 2013

Achieving Farzad Mostashari’s vision for a U.S. healthcare system where “every encounter and every patient has access to all the world’s knowledge” will require a balancing of standards and innovation and a combination of IT and process change. Read More »

ONC Interoperability Meeting Raises More Questions Than Answers

Adrian Gropper | The Health Care Blog | July 25, 2017

ONC’s first public event under the new administration was very well organized and run. Eight leading health information exchange incumbents were able to describe their current approaches and plans, the patient advocate position was clearly stated, and a nice synthesis of the issues raised by the trusted framework approach to interoperability was prepared by a consulting organization. Much to ONC’s credit, they went out of their way to provide access and public comment to an extent that is unprecedented in my experience. Slides and recordings will be posted soon and a 30-day comment period runs through August 24. Kudos to ONC...

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Open source EHRs empower America's community health centers

How the economics of open source make sense for large scale, national healthcare infrastructure projects. A recent study  published by the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, examined "the use of open source electronic health records within the federal safety net."

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Quality And Safety Implications Of Emergency Department Information Systems

Heather L. Farley, Kevin M. Baumlin, Azita G. Hamedani, et.al. | Annals of Emergency Medicine (AEM) | June 24, 2013

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009 and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services “meaningful use” incentive programs [...] have galvanized hospital efforts to implement hospital-based electronic health records. Read More »

Report Urges Feds To Push Open-Source Solutions

Joseph Conn | ModernHealthcare.com | July 11, 2013

While there have been successes and failures in the deployment of open-source health information technology by federally supported safety net healthcare organizations, the federal government could and should do more to ensure more frequent successes, according to an HHS-funded report. Read More »

Stimulus dollars pour into health IT industry, driving growth

Betsi Fores | The Daily Caller | April 20, 2012

Epic Systems Corps., another company in the health IT industry, has also fared thanks to this deal. In fact, the CEO, Judy Faulkner, who happens to be a major donor to President Obama, was put on the seat to determine how best to spend the allotted $19 billion. The Washington Examiner writes: “Faulkner and her company oppose the president’s vision for health IT, but Epic employees are massive Democratic donors. They’ve given nearly $300,000 to Democrats since 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.”

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The HITECH Era in Retrospect

John D. Halamka, M.D. and Micky Tripathi, Ph.D. | The New England Journal of Medicine | September 7, 2017

At a high level, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009 accomplished something miraculous: the vast majority of U.S. hospitals and physicians are now active users of electronic health record (EHR) systems. No other sector of the U.S. economy of similar size (one sixth of the gross domestic product) and complexity (more than 5000 hospitals and more than 500,000 physicians) has undergone such rapid computerization...

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