Archive for the ‘HITECH’ Category

The sound of HIMSS 13 has quieted and now the work continues to follow through on the connections made and the initiatives launched. The CommonWell Health Alliance is one that will be closely watched as the work unfolds. Work is what will be required to make the CommonWell initiative happen. There are doubts as to [...]

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published the final rule yesterday detailing the Meaningful Use Stage 2 requirements. The rule spans 672 pages, and in large part leaves the proposed rules released earlier this year intact with a few exceptions. The rule delays the Stage 2 requirements to 2014, giving providers more time to [...]

Five hundred million dollars is a lot of money. You may recall that $500m was the settlement in August between Google and the Department of Justice (you can read my article at The Health Care Blog) that allows Google to avoid prosecution for allowing illegal ads by Canadian pharmacies that sold prescription drugs to U.S. [...]

During an #HITsm tweet chat in February, I asked participants if they believed the momentum in EHR adoption by healthcare facilities initiated from HITECH and Meaningful Use would continue, if for whatever reason, funding for Meaningful Use was halted or stopped completely. The responses varied from tremendously optimistic to mild hesitation and skepticism. After some [...]

There have been various terms used to describe what is simply the exchange of patient data between different entities. RHIO and HIE are two terms often used, with HIE being the one most used today. What is HIE or Health Information Exchange? eHealth Initiative defines it in the most simple terms: The act of transferring [...]

After working on EMR interfaces to the referring community for a couple of years now, one of the customers that I worked with is an independent imaging center, Austin Radiological Association, came up with the following steps to EMR interfacing. You may find the following steps helpful as you compare, or construct, your own EMR [...]

There seems to be a greater demand for interfacing to EMRs today. With the HITECH and ARRA push, we find that more healthcare facilities, like hospitals, imaging centers, and laboratories, are trying to find, and use, a magic wand. Unfortunately, there is no magic wand for healthcare interfacing. There are standards, however, such as HL7, [...]