HIT Featured Commentary news and information

At the start of every new year, we're bombarded with resolutions and predictions of what will happen in the next 12 months. Almost every industry in 2013 is predicted to place a major emphasis on the use of tools that provide analytics, business intelligence, decision support or some other...
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"Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.”—Unknown
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Last month, our hospital attested for Stage 1 meaningful-use incentives. Years of work, requiring the focus and determination of the entire organization, were integral to meeting this big milestone.
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Our organization has an informal climbing team made up of administrators and clinicians who tackle a couple of summits each year. We have lofty aspirations—the ultimate goal is to climb six of the "Seven Summits." Self-funded, the team's previous climbs have included Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount...
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You might think that as a career matures, things would slow a little and afford some opportunities for activities that are not directly connected to work. Sadly, this is not the case.
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Call it a health information network, a regional health information organization or a health information exchange—the concept of exchanging health records has been around for more than a decade. Unfortunately, by any name, it hasn't become mainstream, and records-exchange challenges persist.
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Hardly a day passes without a conversation about innovation.
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At the center of so many critical issues in healthcare today lies the electronic health record. It's driving the meaningful-use regulations, ICD-10 implementation, updates to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the most basic of all questions—how to reduce the cost of...
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Every now and then, I find it useful to sit back, relax a bit and ponder what awaits us as health information technology leaders. If you believe the "relax" part or the "now and then" part, you completely missed my cynicism and semi-sarcasm. I find myself thinking about this all too often.
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Using off-the-shelf content standards and messaging protocols, the Veterans Affairs Department and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of HHS have successfully demonstrated how to electronically tag mental health and other highly sensitive clinical records to help...
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