Health Data Management articles from January 2009

Health Data Management archives from January 2009

New year, new features.(Editor's Notes)(Editorial)
January 1, 2009... Byline: Gary Baldwin If I have one gripe about media coverage today, it is how superficial much of it is. And how little follow-up there is. We are offering a number of new features this year that will enable us to buck those trends....

U-Iowa disciplines 8 for data peeks.(Newsline Digest)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics has fired one employee and suspended seven others for improperly accessing patient information. The Des Moines Register reports the unpaid suspensions were for five days each. The improper access was...

Extortion Attempt Involves Rx Data.(Newsline Digest)
January 1, 2009... Pharmacy benefits management firm Express Scripts Inc. is the victim of an extortion attempt that includes the threat to expose identifiable information in millions of patient records, the company has announced. The Federal Bureau of...

CPOE: It Don't Come Easy; Achieving the goal of reducing errors requires vigilant scrutiny of how well electronic order entry is working. Avoiding "alert fatigue" also figures in.(Cover Story)
January 1, 2009... Byline: Howard J. Anderson, Executive Editor Focusing on the need to dramatically reduce medical errors, many patient safety advocates have urged hospitals to implement computerized physician order entry systems. By shifting from...

Identifying Best Practices.(Cover Story)
January 1, 2009... The Leapfrog Group is forming a CPOE Executive Consortium that will identify best practices for order entry. The CPOE panel, which will include hospital executives as well as software developers, will produce a white paper this year with advice...

Consultants Offer CPOE Warnings.(Cover Story)
January 1, 2009... Consultant Becky Quammen advises her clients to be extremely cautious when implementing computerized physician order entry systems. Making the shift from having unit secretaries or nurses place paper-based orders to having physicians use an...

It's Not entirely Academic; Despite their complex environments, teaching hospitals can become highly automated information sharers.(Feature Story)
January 1, 2009... Byline: Gary Baldwin, Editorial Director This is the first in a six-part series that highlights the accomplishments of industry leaders in implementing electronic health records. Part 1 focuses on academic medical centers, with other major...

Health I.T. Vendor Buying Spikes; Multiple vendors made buys in 2008, but has the bottom dropped out?(Feature Story)
January 1, 2009... Byline: Joseph Goedert, News Editor Mergers and acquisitions in the health care information technology industry ramped up considerably in 2008. Whether the activity will continue during a financial crisis is debatable. Through...

Rocky start, successful end; being a beta site wasn't pretty, but OHSU likes the finished product.(Oregon Health & Science University)(Hospitals)(Report)
January 1, 2009... Byline: Joseph Goedert, News Editor In April 2008, Oregon Health & Science University in Portland deployed an electronic health records system at Doernbecher Children's Hospital and OHSU Hospital. With that go-live, the EHR from Verona,...

Taking the EHR plunge; A small group practice takes a big bang approach to eliminating paper.(Group Practices)
January 1, 2009... Byline: Howard J. Anderson, Executive Editor LoCicero Medical Group took two big leaps of faith when it made the transition to electronic health records. The Tampa, Fla.-based practice's four physicians and their staff went cold turkey,...

Contracts Update.
January 1, 2009... The Contracts Update section includes announcements of contracts that health care information technology companies have signed with customers in recent weeks. Contract news can be sent to Health Data Management by e-mail to:...

Intel Places Its Bets on Telemedicine.(A Closer Look)
January 1, 2009... Byline: Howard J. Anderson, Executive Editor Intel Corp. has revealed pilot sites and a customer for its new Health Guide telemedicine device and related software and services. The small device, designed to be used in the homes of the...

Data Makes a Difference; How a registry gives doctors reminders for preventive medicine.(Clinical Quality Reporting)
January 1, 2009... Byline: Howard J. Anderson, Executive Editor Delivering the right data to the right doctor at the right time can have a big impact on the quality of care. That's what Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield has discovered in its Collaboration...

Team builder.(Executive Session)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... Byline: Gary Baldwin, Editorial Director Fifteen years ago, when Harry Lukens became senior vice president and CIO at Lehigh Valley Health Network, he inherited every executive's common concern: high turnover. "When I took over," recalls...

Rule implements Patient Safety Act.(Newsline)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... The Department of Health and Human Services has published a final rule implementing parts of the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005. The Act authorized creation of patient safety organizations. These organizations will...

Feds Change Medical Leave Data Rules.(Newsline)
January 1, 2009... The U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division has published a final rule that changes existing processes employers must follow to clarify or authenticate a medical certification form under the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. ...

Medicare Rule Includes Fax Exemption.(Newsline)
January 1, 2009... The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has published a final rule setting the Medicare Part B physician fee schedule for 2009. The rule will permit until 2012 the use of computer-generated faxes of prescriptions for Medicare patients to...

Medsphere's GUI Now Open Source.(Newsline)
January 1, 2009... Electronic health records vendor Medsphere Corp. has released most components of its VueCentric graphical user interface to the open source market. The Carlsbad, Calif.-based company is retooling 10% to 15% of the components to make them...

Senator's Reform Plan Highlights I.T.(Newsline)
January 1, 2009... Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, has published a 98-page white paper outlining his views of comprehensive health care reform. While light on specifics, Baucus outlines throughout the report his views on the...

Study predicts big savings from PHRs.(Newsline)(Report)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... A new study makes the bold claim that widely adopted personal health records could save the U.S. health care system more than $19 billion annually after expenses. The study, from the Center for Information Technology Leadership at Partners...

'Biotic Man' for Building Drugs.(Newsline Digest)
January 1, 2009... GE Global Research and the Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative within the Department of Defense will jointly develop a "virtual human" computer model to speed drug development. The two-year "Biotic Man" project, funded with...