A lot can happen in a week of health IT

I'm back from my first full week off in more than a year. While it was nice to be able to sleep in, play some tennis, ignore tons of email and generally recharge my batteries, I have to say it's tough getting back up to speed because I think I missed a whole lot in health IT last week.

I recently wrote a story for another news outlet--to be published in a couple of weeks--about how hospital CIOs are struggling to understand the Medicaid parameters for the federal EMR subsidy program because each state runs its Medicaid program a little differently. Wouldn't you know, CMS last week issued some guidelines for state Medicaid directors to follow in implementing and administering "meaningful use"?

Another story I wrote for someone else that also awaits publication is about hospital CIOs having to take more responsibility for clinical operations. Well, right there in last Thursday's FierceEMR is a story about a new guide from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives calling on CEOs, COOs, CMOs and CNOs to share the burden of EMR adoption. Everybody's role seems to be changing, which will only make this field more interesting as we head into 2011.

I also learned from reading FierceEMR that the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT believes that healthcare providers collectively will have to hire 50,000 new employees as they strive for meaningful use. That's reassuring to a health IT journalist such as myself, since someone's going to have to keep this growing workforce informed over the next several years.

Thanks to freelancers Lisa Scott, Ken Terry and Tammy Parker for filling in for me last week, as well as Fierce staffers Sandra Yin and Dan Bowman, who also picked up some of the slack. I see I have a lot of catching up to do. At least next Monday is Labor Day. That means the next issue of FierceHealthIT won't be published until Tuesday, Sept. 7. - Neil

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