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Though HITECH may have some questioning their physician integration strategy — especially the part about underwriting EMRs using the Stark relaxations — it hasn’t deterred Inova Health and its CIO Geoff Brown one bit. In fact, Brown thinks strengthening those key relationships is more important than ever. Heartened by the industry’s move towards standards and [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Inova Health System SVP & CIO Geoff Brown, Chapter 2 [12:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (137)

After 14 years with St. Claire Regional Medical Center, you might think Randy McCleese has done it all, but you’d be wrong. That’s because the CIO is just now embarking on a new core clinical install with a vendor he hasn’t worked with before — Meditech. And McCleese isn’t dipping his toe into the Meditech [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/St. Claire Regional Medical Center VP of IS & CIO Randy McCleese, Chapter 3 [12:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (81)

The HIT Policy Committee’s new Privacy and Security Tiger Team workgroup is striving to establish the requirements that intermediaries in personal health information (PHI) message transactions will be subject to. Under HIPAA, parties which have access to PHI are deemed covered entities (CEs), required to establish business associate agreements (BAAs) which obligate them to handle the data in certain ways. With the rise of health information exchange under the HITECH Act, the Office of the National Coordinator created the Tiger Team to provide it with guidance in governing health information organizations (HIOs) — or third-party intermediaries which have varying degrees of involvement with the messages.

“When exploring uncharted waters or embarking on a great adventure often the final destination is not necessarily that which was first envisioned. An adventure, by definition is a venture or gamble. Christopher Columbus did not expect to discover a new world; his intended adventure upon embarkation is not why he is remembered today. The same [...]

The HIT Standards Committee — a federal advisory body created to guide the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology in its implementation of the HITECH Act — spent the initial part of its monthly meeting this week struggling with issues of communication, structure and capacity.
One reason for that struggle with [...]

After writing public comments on meaningful use, submitting grant proposals and trying to keep pace of healthcare reform, the comment period has just begun.  With the formation of the Regional Extension Centers, State HIT coordinators being nominated, Health Information Exchanges gaining more traction and countless vendors trying to obtain your stimulus money, a CIO’s involvement [...]

As we enter the era of Meaningful Use, we are truly seeing an increased realization of the central role that IT plays in provider strategic planning.  Happily, we are also starting see recognition from many corners of healthcare organizations of the wisdom of making targeted, shrewd, IT investments as down payments on organizations’ futures.
And that [...]

Experts from some not-for-profit hospitals have created an EHR Meaningful Use Implementation best-practices library, as part of the Premier healthcare alliance Health Information Technology (HIT) Collaborative. Championed by Bill Spooner, CIO at Sharp HealthCare, and Craig Richardville, CIO for the Carolinas HealthCare System (CHS), the library features specific instruction on ways to speed implementation of [...]

As part of its Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) program to promote innovation, ONC has awarded four organizations a total of $60 million — Mayo Clinic of Medicine, Harvard University, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Each institution’s research projects “will identify short-term and long-term solutions [...]

Question: With some of the new threats going around that use the Autorun feature of CD-ROMs and Flash Drives; what’s the best defense against this type of attack. You can turn the Autorun feature off with a Group Policy, but then you have some CDs (i.e. PACS images, etc.) that depend upon the Autorun feature [...]

ONC has issued a whitepaper examining whether, to what extent, and how individuals should have the ability to exercise control over their information in an HIE environment. It looks at existing approaches and details policy options, considerations, and analysis. “This whitepaper will serve as input to, and be reviewed by, the HIT Policy Committee’s Privacy and Security [...]

It’s not just genomic scientists that are dealing with enormous amounts of DNA sequence data – the clinician will soon be next.  However, the explosion in linking disease with genetics, and the realization that the FDA will require gene testing prior to the prescription of potentially hundreds of drugs, will challenge the storage capacity required for [...]

When Gregg Veltri got tired of all the regulation in banking, he decided to try his hand at healthcare. It didn’t take too long before the CIO realized he’d gone from the frying pan into the fire. With almost one kind of audit or another every month, Veltri needs to stay sharp, while positioning his [...]

Further clarification is needed as to how certification will apply to organizations that use multiple clinical systems as components to an overall EHR, states CHIME in a comment letter to ONC regarding the Certification standards and implementation specifications IFR. CHIME supports wording in the rule that requires only certification of individual EHR modules.
Additionally, CHIME wants [...]

Though the goal was simply to “wordsmith” its “Health IT Strategic Framework: Strategic Themes, Principles, Objectives, and Strategies,” report, the HIT Policy Committee’s Strategic Planning Workgroup spent much of its meeting this week engaged in a fundamental debate on how best to balance privacy concerns with the need for an open, “learning” healthcare system.
“I don’t [...]

A journalist’s job is to listen for trends, sift through the noise, and find the kernel of importance in a speech, trial, or presentation. It’s a skill that comes over time, after many mistakes and, for me, after getting many a lead ripped to shreds by my journalism professors. I think I’ve gotten the hang [...]

Other than a major focus on Meaningful Use and clinical systems, security concerns are a top priority, with one third of respondents (34 percent) saying an internal breach was their top worry in that area, and nearly one-quarter (23 percent) said their organization had a security breach in the past year, according to 21st Annual [...]

Before the term HIE appeared in the pages of HITECH, many CIOs didn’t pay it much attention, preferring instead to focus on getting their houses in order. While that’s still a great strategy, healthcare informatics leaders now have no choice but to dip their toes into the murky waters of inter-organizational information exchange. While many [...]

Before the term HIE appeared in the pages of HITECH, many CIOs didn’t pay it much attention, preferring instead to focus on getting their houses in order. While that’s still a great strategy, healthcare informatics leaders now have no choice but to dip their toes into the murky waters of inter-organizational information exchange. While many [...]

Before the term HIE appeared in the pages of HITECH, many CIOs didn’t pay it much attention, preferring instead to focus on getting their houses in order. While that’s still a great strategy, healthcare informatics leaders now have no choice but to dip their toes into the murky waters of inter-organizational information exchange. While many [...]

While you might think a HIMSS Analytics Stage Six hospital sees the interim MU regulation as child’s play, think again. That’s because even though the hospital may be able to handle what’s being required, helping the local docs meet their criteria is looking to be a very tall order. The most troubling aspect of MU [...]

As chair of the CHIME Advocacy Leadership Team, David Muntz is as plugged into the Meaningful Use saga as any non-government employee can be. And to hear him tell it, the interim final definition of MU needs to be significantly tempered if the majority of healthcare organizations are to have the slightest shot at qualifying [...]

Although not mentioned as one of the ‘Meaningful Use’ or ‘Initial Set of Standards and Certification Criteria’ for a Certified or Complete Electronic Health Record (see http://healthit.hhs.gov/blog/onc/), a new federal guideline to enable the use of personal genomic data in EHRs is being developed, according to sources within HHS.  The U.S. Veterans Affairs Department (VA), [...]