Technology

We continue to see progress in improving the nation's healthcare system, and a key tool to helping achieve that goal is the increased use of electronic health records by the nation's doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers.

Jodi Daniel, director of ONC's Office of Policy and Planning, wrote that ONC will "develop a policy framework for putting the person more at the center of their own health and health care, enabled by health IT."

Maryland's health exchange Web site is still riddled with glitches and might need to be completely overhauled - or even abandoned - once the first round of enrollment ends March 31, a member of Gov. Martin O'Malley's Cabinet told lawmakers Tuesday.

The combination of electronic medical record data and administrative data provides the fullest picture of patient health histories.

Dennis Scanlon, PhD, professor of health policy and administration at Penn State University, says there are a number of ways professionals continue to use data to improve delivery outcomes.

Significant additional outreach and engagement strategies and incentives are likely required to increase adoption and ongoing use of health risk assessment tools among target populations.

2014 has been identified as the make-or-break year for electronic health records (EHRs). Despite a more than $22 billion federal investment to reward meaningful use of EHR technology, new report findings suggest that the government has failed to put protections in place that would prevent the technology from increasing costs, including through overbilling.

The health IT market is poised for strong growth.

Over two million people have enrolled in health insurance plans through the federally run HealthCare.gov and state healthcare enrollment websites, a US administration official said on Tuesday. HealthCare.gov covers 36 states, and another 14 states have their own websites.

A look back at some of the InFocus blog highlights of 2013.

The Health IT Policy Committee (HITPC) adopted recommendations from its Consumer Empowerment Workgroup on patient-generated health data (PGHD) at its December meeting and is expected to finalize its complete Stage 3 recommendations in February.

The business of treating patients via telehealth in the U.S. will dramatically increase to nearly $2 billion in revenue within five years due to a confluence of events in the health care industry from doctor shortages to provider payment changes under the Affordable Care Act.

Both potential benefits and unexpected consequences were found as a result of the rollout of electronic prescribing.

Millions of people facing the cancellation of health insurance policies will be allowed to buy catastrophic coverage and will be exempt from penalties if they go without insurance next year, the White House said Thursday night.

City of New Orleans Health Commissioner Dr. Karen DeSalvo has been named as HHS' new national coordinator for health information technology. She starts Jan. 13.

PLAINSBORO, N.J. From leveraging their joint buying power to better deployment of a hard-to-find pediatric liver transplant surgeon, two large healthcare systems in Florida are seeing the benefits of sharing resources on a bigger scale, according to Kavita Patel, MD, of the Brookings Institution, and her co-authors who write in the inaugural issue of The American Journal of Accountable Care.

When you are waiting for results from a medical test like a cancer biopsy, that call from your doctor can't come fast enough. As a doctor, I am sometimes so buried in an avalanche of medical records that it can delay decisions about what to do next.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently announced that Stage 2 of the EHR Meaningful Use program would be extended through 2016, especially as many healthcare CIOs continue to struggle with health IT tool vendors. This also means that Stage 3 will be delayed until 2017.

Chris Belmont, vice president and chief information officer, MD Anderson Cancer Center, says that health systems like Ochsner are using data to validate what they already know about certain patient cases.

Hackensack Alliance ACO integrates pharmacists and adopts new technology as it joins in the bold experiment to lower costs and improve quality under health reform.

Almost half of 206 hospital executives polled in a recent survey said they do not intend to use an accountable care organization (ACO)-like model in their health systems. Only 20% of those polled currently participate in an ACO.

The CMS is giving providers another year to show they've met the Stage 2 criteria of the federal government's incentive program to encourage the adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records. That means the start of the next phase will be pushed back a year.

As policymakers start designing the third phase of Meaningful Use, eight healthcare and IT groups are asking the ONC's Health IT Policy Committee to commit to including patient-generated health data in the requirements.

A bicameral effort is quickly gaining traction in an effort that would forever change the sustainable growth rate (SGR) and Medicare reimbursement model.

About 29,000 people successfully navigated HealthCare.gov and selected an insurance plan on Sunday and Monday, more than the entire number of people who were able to enroll through the federal exchange during the month of October, according to a person familiar with the project.

Nearly every Institute of Medicine report or blueribbon panel tasked with developing ideas for fixing our healthcare delivery system points to the same solution: greater use of health information technology (HIT).

Although health information technology interventions are associated with cost savings and revenue gains, there still are few articles on this topic.

Organizations pursuing change need the infrastructure and tools to effect it. Health information technology is critical to delivery reform but its development will require support and time.

The American Journal of Managed Care was founded in 1995, during the last period of serious reexamination of how healthcare is paid for and how it's delivered. Nearly 20 years later, after the retreat of the first managed care revolution, per capita healthcare costs have more than doubled, and there is again a strong movement toward payment and delivery system reform.