A pilot project called OpenNotes may give healthcare providers and organizations some clues about how to manage the growing demand for transparency between caregivers and their patients. Principal Investigators Jan Walker, RN, MBA and Tom Delbanco, MD say that while the findings won’t be formally released until later this year, some inferences about what the
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In the wake of electronic medical records vendor Allscripts’ announcement of sharply lower first quarter sales and earnings and board resignations, the company became the target of a class action lawsuit filed on May 2, 2012 by Labaton Sucharow, LLP in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The suit was filed
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One of the best parts of our job as health information technology industry chroniclers is talking with people from the across the country about the innovative projects they’re working on.  Over the past few years, a big part of those conversations have been focused on selecting, implementing and using electronic medical health records. Now we
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By working together to share data, methods, and processes focused on improving care, a collaboration between the Ohio Children’s Hospital Association, business leaders, and the state’s children’s hospitals has reduced adverse drug events (ADE) and surgical site infections (SSI) in eight pediatric hospitals in Ohio. The Ohio Children’s Hospitals’ Solutions for Patient Safety Collaborative (OCHSPS),
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 The HIT Policy Committee continued its debate over the proposed Stage 2 Meaningful Use ruling at its April 4 meeting, agreeing with many, but not all of the recommendations contained in the proposed rule released March 7.  At the meeting, the committee’s various workgroups presented their response to the proposed rule. The HIT Policy Committee
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Under the new Medicare Shared Savings Program (Shared Savings Program), 27 Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) have entered into agreements with CMS. The first 27 Shared Savings Program ACOs will serve an estimated 375,000 beneficiaries in 18 States. This brings the total number of organizations participating Medicare shared savings initiatives on April 1 to 65, including
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Phoenix Cardiac Surgery, P.C., of Phoenix and Prescott, Arizona, has agreed to pay the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) a $100,000 settlement and take corrective action to implement policies and procedures to safeguard the protected health information of its patients. The settlement with the physician practice follows an extensive investigation by the
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In a move designed to make EHR certification requirements both more flexible and easier to understand for vendors and providers, the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) has proposed that by 2014, Eligible Providers (EP), Eligible Hospitals (EH), and Critical Access Hospitals (CAH) be required to have a Base EHR coupled with any additional EHR
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Privacy and security guidelines released earlier this month by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) to protect the enormous amount of healthcare information transmitted by state Health Information Exchanges take another step in protecting the rights of patients. In its third Project Information Notice (PIN) for the State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program,
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In the course of putting together the content for a biweekly publication such as Inside Healthcare IT, we talk to CIOs in many different parts of the country who, to a person, genuinely seem to love what they do.  Most of these folks have been in the health information technology and/or the clinical fields for
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