In January 2009, HHS published a final rule outlining the steps the healthcare industry must take to update the electronic data transmissions standards used by the financial systems of hospitals, physician offices, claims clearinghouses and payers. The 34-page final rule called for a 36-month rollout period for the new data exchange standards and urged all affected healthcare organizations to immediately begin taking steps toward conversion to the new standards by Jan. 1, 2012.
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The nine winners of this year's annual awards for outstanding achievement in applied medical informatics from the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems share a common theme, according to AMDIS President William Bria—they know how to employ information technology to get the patient-care improvement job done.
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The Cleveland Clinic has an electronic health-record system called MyPractice for its clinicians and a tethered personal health record, MyChart, for its patients. So why did it want to partner with Microsoft Corp. on a pilot home health project using the software giant's HealthVault PHR platform? In a word, interfacing.
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Ted Kremer is the executive director of the Greater Rochester (N.Y.) Regional Health Information Organization, which is providing health information exchange services to a 10-county area in western New York.
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Integration is the future for Michael Oppenheim, vice president and chief medical information officer at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System based in Great Neck, N.Y., where since 2002 he has led both the implementation and the customization of electronic health-record systems for the 10-hospital organization.
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Todd Rowland is both a physician and the executive director of HealthLINC, a regional health information organization based in Bloomington, Ind. In 2003, only about 3% of medical practices had electronic health-record systems in HealthLINC's key southern Indiana service area, prosperous and bustling Monroe County, home to Indiana University, and largely rural Orange County, gateway to the Hoosier National Forest.
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Chris Snyder, chief medical information officer for 366-bed Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury, Md., has a lot of the top-end, clinical information technology toys to play with—closed-loop medication management; computerized physician order entry; medication scanning and storage; diagnostic results reporting; and a comprehensive longitudinal data repository.
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Jonathan Sykes, the chief medical information officer and director of clinical information systems at 391-bed Allegiance Health, has seen both the Scylla and Charybdis of clinical quality improvement and led the fight to tame both.
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Marilou Terpenning is the managing partner of the four-physician, Santa Monica (Calif.) Hematology-Oncology Consultants, and also the health information technology superuser and guiding light into her group's deployment and customization of two, interfaced electronic health-record systems.
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Sidna Tulledge-Scheitel is a practicing primary-care physician and medical director for global products and services at the Mayo Clinic, which, despite its international reputation for medical specialists, also provides primary-care services to 140,000 residents in the Rochester, Minn., area, including its own employees and their dependents.
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By Joseph Conn / HITS staff writer | July 08, 2010
| Basic Web
HHS has proposed a new federal healthcare information privacy rule to amend the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Reflecting changes Congress sought last year in the stimulus law, the proposed rule would give patients the right to restrict certain disclosures and ban the sale of patient data without patient consent, according to HHS.
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When Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, it called on HHS to create from scratch a nationwide network of regional extension centers, or RECs, to promote the adoption and use of health information technology.
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By Andis Robeznieks | May 10, 2010
| Print Magazine
The influx of information technology in healthcare means today's hospital architects and designers have to accommodate more wire, more conduit, more plugs and more closets holding more racks of flashing lights than ever before. But they also have a little more room to do so because of smaller—or even nonexistent—central nurse stations, fewer IT-dedicated employees on-site and disappearing file rooms.
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The idea that medical providers would someday have mobile devices that allow them to monitor, diagnose and communicate with their patients isn't exactly a new one.
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