As the crocuses, daffodils, and hyacinths begin to bloom here in the Northeast, I like to think about what has contributed to the growth of these beautiful plants. We have had a very mild winter here in New England, including some record-breaking warm weather. Perhaps it was the plant fertilizer I used last fall, giving these…

The following was excerpted from an email received from the Office of the National Coordinator: The Next Steps: An Overview of Meaningful Use Stage 2 The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is a cooperative agreement partner of National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC). On Monday, March 26, 2012 at 1 p.m. EDT,…

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a research letter in the March 21 issue entitled, “Physician Violations of Online Professionalism and Disciplinary Actions: A National Survey of State Medical Boards,” written by S. Ryan Greysen, MD, MHS, MA; Katherine C. Chretien, MD; Terry Kind, MD, MPH; Aaron Young, PhD; and Cary P….

The final panel discussion today at the PDR Network sponsored PharmEHR conference was a debate among four physicians regarding their experiences using ePrescribing. In response to the question, “Has ePrescribing made your practice more efficient?”, positive responses outnumbered the negative three to one. Although ePrescribing was felt to be beneficial — particularly in relation to…

A new feature will be released shortly that will make it easier for clinicians and practice managers to request a proposal directly from EHR vendors. The Request a Proposal button will be visible at multiple locations throughout the site for participating EHR products. The purpose of this feature is to provide a simplified mechanism for…

A controversial study in Health Affairs this month has provoked a series of articles and public exchanges about the potential for health IT to reduce costs while improving quality. Why so much attention to this article? The conclusions of the study call into question whether health IT will result in lower healthcare costs. Here are…

Meaningful Use Stage Criteria were released on February 23 for Eligible Professionals (EPs), Eligible Hospitals (EHs), and Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs). Predictably, there has been wide coverage of the Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM). Here are some good resources to help AmericanEHR users get a good understanding of the proposed rule. Be sure to…

(Published on behalf of HIMSS) There have been many gains made in the Healthcare Industry in its goal to meet Meaningful Use Stage 1 compliance. New research from HIMSS Analytics reported a 16 percent increase, from 25 to 41 percent in the seven months from February to September 2011, in hospitals being well positioned to…

CMS just announced a “National Provider Call” for Monday, March 12th; 12:30pm ET – 2pm ET. Here’s the message that was sent via email: This National Provider Call will provide an overview of the proposed rule, so you can learn what you need to know to receive EHR incentive payments. (CMS plans to hold another…

In this post, Dr. Robert Lamberts does a nice job of describing his experience with generating clinical summaries that meet the meaningful use requirements. He describes creating a handout that includes the following: What was the diagnosis? Were any medications started or stopped? Where any tests, labs, or consults ordered? What were the results of…