Industry News

1/10/12 – Accenture surveys more than 3,700 doctors across eight countries.

1/4/12 – Meaningful use makes HealthLeaders Media's list for the year as No. 5.

12/7/11 – Medicare paid $920.3 million; Medicaid paid $916 million.

11/17/11 – Technology may be fundamental to sustainability.

11/01/11 – “Summary of Meaningful Use Readiness”’ is first report in series.

9/23/11 – AMIA anticipates first CI board exam to be available next fall.

9/15/11 – Stage 2 will likely require electronic orders for 60 percent of eligible patients.

9/19/11 – CMS administrator addresses Nashville Health Care Council.

8/18/11 – Loans to support efforts to raise quality of care.

6/22/11 – Three weeks before the storm, St. John’s transferred to an EHR system.

6/3/11 – IT needs to be a major part of reshaping healthcare, according to society’s CEO.

5/17/11 – Fitch Ratings finds profits higher among not-for-profit hospitals with advanced IT.

4/28/11 – HRSA program is designed to help rural healthcare providers qualify for incentive payments.

2/22/11 - CMS officials reported uptick in numbers of healthcare providers registering for EHR incentives.

1/6/2011 - Culled from journal articles, conferences, blogs and other media, some of these phrases might not be all that new. But it’s our bet that even if you’ve heard some of them before, you’re going to hear a lot more references to them in 2011.

5/5/10 - Using bar-code technology with an electronic medication administration record (eMAR) substantially reduces transcription and medication administration errors, as well as potential drug-related adverse events, says a new study funded by the Department of Health & Human Services' (HHS) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The study is published in the May 6 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

2/15/10 - Members of a federal health IT advisory group last week proposed to relax the number of measures that will be required for healthcare providers to demonstrate “meaningful use” of electronic health record systems.

5/11/09 - Mark Leavitt, MD, president and CEO of the Certification Commission for Health Information and Technology NORWOOD, MA.  If providers delay their acquisition of an EHR until the federal government issues a definition of "meaningful use," they're wasting valuable time. That's the consensus of healthcare IT experts who regularly take the pulse of the Washington D.C. bureaucracy.

1/29/09 - The US House of Representatives passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 which includes the "HITECH Act". The HITECH Act will provide $20 billion to accelerate adoption of Health Information Technology systems, specifically certified EHR systems. The bill also mentions significant financial incentives through Medicare and Medicaid for doctors and hospitals that adopt EHRs. It is estimated that if this bill receives final approval it could mean that nearly 90 percent of doctors and 70 percent of hospitals will be using EHRs within the next 10 years. Government assistance for the adoption of EHRs will be provided through grants as well as loans as part of the proposal. The Senate is positioned to pass the bill as early as next week. HMS will continue to monitor this legislation and provide further information as it becomes available. To review a summary of the bill you can go to the link below.

1/26/09 - When computers replace paper, patient mortality rates drop 15% during hospitalization, among other metrics, according to a study of 41 Texas hospitals by Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins School of Medicine researchers published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.