The Departments of Health and Human Service and Labor announced last Friday nearly $1 billion in grants under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for healthcare IT training, regional extension centers (RECs) and health information exchange. Read »

The meaningful use workgroup, which reports to HHS' Health IT Policy Committee, recommended a reduction in the number of measures providers would need to meet in order to qualify for federal incentive funds under CMS. From the overall feedback CMS has received since the meaningful use criteria was released at the end of December 2009, it's the right thing to do. Read »

The Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services announced on Friday nearly $1 billion in grants to states for health IT training, regional extension centers and health information exchange. Read »

For the most part, the American Academy of Family Physicians, an advocate for health IT, supports the meaningful use criteria that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released at the end of last year. They have an issue, however, with the reporting requirements of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. Read »

The Dept. of Health and Human Services published its Interim Final Rule, "Health Information Technology: Initial Set of Standards, Implementation Specifications and Certification Criteria for Electronic Health Record Technology," which includes certification criteria for EHRs, in the Federal Register Jan. 13. Now that the standards rules for certification have been updated to align with the meaningful use criteria, when will the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) create a process to recognize certification bodies, which is required by law? Read »

The proposed rules released by the Dept. of Health and Human Services for achieving meaningful use from EHRs incorporate recommendations made by proponents of information therapy. Read »

Yesterday, Dec. 30, CMS released a tome of proposed regulations for achieving Meaningful Use of EHR systems by providers and hospitals. For those who have been closely following the discussion of meaningful use by health IT industry analysts and experts, the list of requirements is likely not a surprise. Read »

Nuance, provider of clinical documentation and communication products to healthcare organizations, released a survey it conducted with nearly 1,000 physicians. It is somewhat self-serving - more on that later - but it does highlight issues to which EHR vendors need to pay attention. Read »

IBM Global Financing, the lending and leasing business segment of IBM, announced financing partnerships with four health IT vendors to speed the adoption of EMRs. It's a step in the right direction. Read »

A new study, led by Ashish Jha, MD, an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and Catherine DesRoches of Massachusetts General Hospital, found little difference in cost and quality among the 3,000 hospitals that were in various stages of electronic health record initiatives. If you just stopped at the headline, it's great fodder for those who believe EHRs are over-hyped. But when you read the details of the study's findings, it's actually a story in favor of EHRs. Read »