By Gregg Blesch November 09, 2009 The CMS is hard at work creating a giant, all-knowing repository of claims and payment data from all federal health programs. It's a tool the government believes will help rein in the massive amounts of money spent on claims that are wasteful or flat-out criminal. ... FULL STORY
By Jean DerGurahian October 12, 2009 Nearly a year ago, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality began implementing regulations for its patient-safety organization program—touted as a way for providers to share information and learn from problems. So far, however, the technology has not been finessed enough to really enable that sharing, according to the PSOs. ... FULL STORY
By Joseph Conn October 05, 2009 For more than two decades, speech-recognition software has held bright promise for busy physicians looking for a better way to get what was in their heads onto a printed page or into a computerized health record. ... FULL STORY
By Joseph Conn August 10, 2009 It is an odd way to start a magazine story, by recommending that readers rush out and read books. And yet, that is precisely what Newsweek suggested a couple of weeks ago in its article, “Fifty books for our time.” It is a recommendation repeated here for book No. 4 on that list, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google, by Nicholas Carr, first published last year. Newsweek said all of the books on its list “open a window on the times we live in.” In the case of The Big Switch, at least for healthcare information technology,... ... FULL STORY
By Joseph Conn July 27, 2009 The Veterans Affairs Department has put on hold 45 information technology projects, most of them involving software applications for healthcare, while it subjects the projects to internal review and the strictures of a new project-management scheme. ... FULL STORY
By Elizabeth Gardner July 13, 2009 Getting a healthcare institution to embrace meaningful clinical automation takes dedication, drive and deep knowledge of what clinicians need. For the past 10 years, the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems has recognized outstanding achievement in applied medical informatics. ... FULL STORY
By Elizabeth Gardner July 13, 2009 University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s hospitals had a clinical computer system from one vendor that they really liked. More than half its physicians used a system from another vendor that they really liked. The two did not work together, which stymied the development of a unified electronic health record. ... FULL STORY
By Elizabeth Gardner July 13, 2009 The Fallon Clinic in Worcester, Mass., has managed to lick a problem that defeats many a clinical computing effort: getting many disparate computer systems to talk with each other. ... FULL STORY
By Elizabeth Gardner July 13, 2009 The health information technology professionals most interested in integrated health system Kaiser Permanente's enormous electronic health-record system tend to be from outside the U.S., says Andrew Wiesenthal, associate executive director of the Permanente Federation, the organization of the Permanente medical groups, and point man for KP HealthConnect. ... FULL STORY
By Elizabeth Gardner July 13, 2009 Of all the ways clinical computing can improve medical care, built-in practice guidelines are one of the most powerful, as a recent computerized physician order-entry project at WellStar Health System made abundantly clear. Under the direction of Jonathan Morris, WellStar Kennestone Hospital added practice guidelines for the prevention and treatment of sepsis—one of the most stubborn and deadly diagnoses among hospital patients ... FULL STORY
By Elizabeth Gardner July 13, 2009 Most people agree that projects like electronic health records, physician order entry, and the adoption of practice guidelines can't go anywhere in a healthcare organization without a physician champion to talk everyone into them and keep the momentum going. Family physician Cynthia Herzog played that vital role for MemorialCare Medical Centers, Long Beach, Calif., in its recent switch to a new clinical information system. ... FULL STORY
By Elizabeth Gardner July 13, 2009 Adopting computerized physician order entry is like entering a pool of cold water—painful to do quickly, but so much more painful to do slowly. OB/GYN Matt Sprunger, who doubles as CMIO at Dupont Hospital in Fort Wayne, Ind., decided that the hospital's obstetrics unit would be CPOE's first cold pool. ... FULL STORY
By Elizabeth Gardner July 13, 2009 Michael Dominguez is one of those normally unsung heroes of computing: the very first user of a major new product. “I didn't know that when I did it,” the physician says. ... FULL STORY
By Elizabeth Gardner July 13, 2009 Steve Margolis, a head and neck surgeon who was lured by the siren song of medical informatics and has been at Orlando (Fla.) Health since 2003, has an enviable track record: 85% computerized physician order entry in Orlando Health's emergency rooms (and close to 100% among residents), 80% CPOE in two of the eight hospitals, (and steadily increasing in the others), a clinician portal for real-time access to clinical information from anywhere and standardized order sets systemwide. ... FULL STORY
By Joseph Conn June 22, 2009 A federal advisory panel sought to strike a balance between too much of a stretch and too little when it released a first draft of its so-called “meaningful use” recommendations last week. ... FULL STORY
