If you’re considering launching a Health Information Exchange, take a realistic look at sustainability, recommends a new report released this week. “If the Health Information Organization (HIO) will not be sustainable after the initial funding, then careful consideration should be given to whether to launch [it] in the first place,” says Lynne A. Dunbrack, program
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To keep pace with the seemingly insatiable demand for trained workers to support the nation’s push to digitize healthcare, the nation’s community colleges are exploring ways to leverage the strides they’ve already made in training and placing their HIT Workforce Development graduates in healthcare settings. In Region A, for example, which includes eight member colleges
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Clinicians love iPads and other mobile devices, but they can cause headaches for the IT folks who have to support and track them and the compliance folks who have to ensure that the information being accessing is secure and protected. And when clinicians want to use their own tablets or smartphones at work, the headaches
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Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee (BCBST) has agreed to pay the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) $1.5 million to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy and Security Rules, Leon Rodriguez, Director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR), announced earlier this
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With top-of-mind concerns focused on the delay of ICD-10 and the proposed rules for Stage 2 Meaningful Use, a record-breaking crowd of 37,042 HIT professionals descended on Las Vegas last month for the 2012 Annual HIMSS Conference & Exhibition. “From the perspective of our customers and prospects, the most immediate concerns of participants were ICD-10
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With EHR implementation and adoption moving forward, protecting the Personal Health Information (PHI) stored in those systems becomes even more important.  But making a case to the rest of the C-suite about the importance of investing in a robust set of policies, procedures, and technologies to protect patient data may be an uphill battle.  The Financial
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With their vast financial and IT resources, payers should be leading the effort to transform healthcare and CIOs and providers need to be prepared for increased involvement from the payer community. “In most markets, providers are fragmented and undercapitalized and don’t have the IT competency that payers have,” says Gary Austin, principal and co-founder of
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At the beginning of each year, we take a look back at the stock performance of publicly traded health IT vendors, including some key statistics that we think are relevant to their current market position and future prospects.

Despite the stresses and strains felt by caregivers and administrators alike in hospital information systems implementation and deployment, 84 percent of caregivers say that healthcare IT makes delivering patient care better, and 71 percent said they could accomplish half or less of their workload without healthcare IT.  However, the infrastructure – networks, storage, and computing
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Successfully meeting Meaningful Use Stage 1 has not only given a rural hospital an opportunity to build a health IT infrastructure from the ground up, but it has also proved to be a financial windfall for the organization. According to Greene County Hospital and Nursing Home Administrator Mark Chustz, the 52-bed facility located in Eutaw,
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