April 2010 Archives
By Allan Holmes
04/29/10 05:44 pm ET
The Army plans announce in May plans to create what sounds like a social networking site that will bring together soldiers' families and specific communities within the service with the hopes that they will discuss, seemingly, mental health issues that may be common among soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The reason we say "sounds like" and "seemingly" is because that's the only details Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, the highest ranking psychiatrist in the Army, would give.>>
By John Pulley
04/30/10 08:26 am ET
Keeping up with health IT policy these days is akin to solving a crossword puzzle while skydiving through a cloud of volcanic dust. It's just that easy.>>
By John Pulley
04/28/10 08:52 am ET
To be or not to be a meaningful user of electronic health records? That is the question that has many doctors scratching their heads, says David Blumenthal, whose job as national coordinator for health information technology includes changing physicians' uncertainty into enthusiasm. >>
By John Pulley
04/27/10 12:36 pm ET
Rural areas of the country that have some of the highest rates of chronic disease are far less likely than urban areas to benefit from health information technology. It's not just a dearth of electronic health records. In many cases, rural health care providers don't have access to reliable broadband. >>
By Emily Long
04/26/10 04:09 pm ET
E-health records are an oft-debated technological advance, and the concept of medical charts as patient narrative is one such point of contention. Neil Versel, editor at Fierce Health IT asks how medical records can best be used to communicate patient history while reducing errors. >>
By John Pulley
04/23/10 10:09 am ET
Despite having what is arguably the most successful, large-scale health IT program in the world, the Veteran Affairs Department is under pressure to trim its budget for information technology programs. >>
By Allan Holmes
04/22/10 06:43 pm ET
Lurking behind the movement toward electronic health records has been the idea of which federal agency should regulate the digital files. Or, IF an agency should. At the Wednesday meeting of a Health and Human Services Department advisory panel, a representative from the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates medical devices, explained why the agency hadn't pursued EHRs. From a Government Health IT report on the meeting:>>
By John Pulley
04/21/10 01:14 pm ET
More robust oversight of health IT and better reporting of errors are needed to ensure patient safety as the country's health care providers adopt electronic health records, concluded a draft report, released today, of an Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology policy workgroup. >>
By Emily Long
04/20/10 04:05 pm ET
President Obama announced on Monday his choice of Donald Berwick, a Harvard professor and president of the Institute for Health Care Improvement, to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. >>
By Emily Long
04/19/10 05:24 pm ET
The Health and Human Services Department is stepping up to contain and investigate health data breaches, Government Health IT reported last week.
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By John Pulley
04/16/10 04:51 pm ET
The potential of health IT to improve patients' outcomes is undermined by information systems that "are not designed to collect data to support quality improvement as the primary purpose," says a report released this week by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. >>
By Emily Long
04/15/10 05:09 pm ET
Dr. David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health information technology, has a lot of confidence in the future of his field. But he also acknowledges that since health IT workers will be in high demand as medical professionals adopt new systems, it will take time to for the workforce to match the pace of IT development. >>
By Allan Holmes
04/14/10 05:47 pm ET
Meaningful use is still being debated in Washington, but its possible impacts on health delivery and outcomes already are being discussed. John Halamka, chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and CIO at Harvard Medical School, has some ideas and does about as good a job in clearly identifying them. >>
By John Pulley
04/13/10 10:35 am ET
The California HealthCare Foundation yesterday released results of what it is calling a "ground-breaking study" of personal health records. Interestingly, the foundation emphasized findings that tend to fall in the "duh" category. >>
By John Pulley
04/12/10 11:37 am ET
First there was tulip mania, circa 1637. More recently there were tech stock and real-estate bubbles. Now, enthusiasm for the iPad as a game-changing health IT device is swelling like the string section in a romantic movie score. >>
By John Pulley
04/09/10 10:42 am ET
If Aesop were writing today, he might spin a cautionary tale about the selection of electronic health records. The moral? A proprietary system that looks like a golden goose may turn out to be a costly pile of sour grapes. Or something like that. >>
By Allan Holmes
04/08/10 06:27 pm ET
The California HealthCare Foundation plans to release on Monday findings from a study that documents for the first time specific health benefits patients have reported from using personal health records. (Another term for electronic health records.) The study's authors also will release findings also on who are using e-records and the latest on the public's privacy concerns.>>
By John Pulley
04/07/10 03:01 pm ET
A major failing of the government's plan to digitize paper medical records, assert some privacy advocates assert, is that you just can't trust pointy headed bureaucrats to keep that information safe. That sentiment isn't unfounded, says a CMS official, but it is misplaced. >>
By Allan Holmes
04/06/10 05:17 pm ET
An long-running complaint about software development is it is rarely done for consumers -- the users of a program. Software is typically written for some other agenda or use. That's when you hear the complaint that a program isn't intuitive and is hard to navigate. (Although an exception is Apple's iPad, which has routinely received positive reviews about its ease of use.)>>
By John Pulley
04/05/10 03:08 pm ET
For gearheads and policy wonks who quiver at the mention of health IT (and you know who you are), your "swimsuit issue" hits stands today. That's right, the entire issue of Health Affairs magazine is devoted to ... wait for it ... glistening full-body coverage of the "benefits and limitations of electronic health record systems." >>
By Emily Long
04/02/10 04:07 pm ET
InformationWeek on Thursday reported that the Health IT Policy Committee's certification workgroup is considering a partnership with the Food and Drug Administration to develop an electronic health records certification program. >>
By John Pulley
04/01/10 02:51 pm ET
Early adopters who forgot to preorder an iPad are lining up to get their nerdy mitts on Apple's latest device, which goes on sale on Saturday. We don't expect to see many white coats or stethoscopes in the queue, but mass adoption of the iPad by the medical community could be just a matter of time. >>
By John Pulley
04/01/10 11:31 am ET
It is inevitable that the massive undertaking to digitize and electronically exchange the country's health care data will result in a near-term shortage of health IT workers, right? That's the conventional wisdom. But David Blumenthal, the Obama administration's national coordinator for health IT, takes a more sanguine view--sort of. >>
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