administrators news from FierceHealthIT

> Consumers are still worried that their personal health data won't be safe if it's accessible via a national health information network. Read more...

In most other industries, IT investment is justified largely in terms of ROI. But last week's HIMSS survey results note, healthcare IT managers have some bigger fish to fry. The new research--the Read more...

Washington has become one of several states that may establish competitive "health record banks" in an effort to jump start EMR adoption. What does that mean? Well, in Washington's case, the state would invest $8 million to $12 million to help create six to eight health record data bank sites. Then, consumers get to choose which bank stores their medical records. Making EMR administrators actually compete for patient data? An intriguing notion, definitely. Article

University of Chicago Hospitals are planning a $70 million upgrade to their 1990s-era clinical information system. Physicians and administrators with UC's Phoenix Project, which will take place over five years, chose software from Epic Systems to replace the previous Oacis technology, a decision which took about a year. (If I were them, I'd have a nice long talk with Kaiser's Justen Deal about Epic's alleged scalability problems. By this point, though, I'm sure the Epic salesguys have …

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When the University of Texas-Harris County Psychiatric Center decided to digitize patient records, execs faced all of the usual barriers to EMR adoption, as well as a few challenges unique to their discipline. In addition to tackling standard automation challenges, administrators had to deal with narrative-heavy records and particularly stringent privacy requirements. During the three-year project, the organization struggled to find a combination of technology and workflow strategies that …

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Remember that sinking feeling when you drive that shiny new car off the lot and hear the engine knocking and pinging? Folks at the Spokane Regional Health District (SRHD)are apparently feeling it, too. They've stopped paying bills from Tyler Technologies Inc., a Maine firm they're considering suing for selling them a $200,000 financial software system they say doesn't work. Administrators say that Tyler's MUNIS system must be restarted every five minutes to keep from crashing. While the …

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At St. Luke's Hospital East--Lee's Summit (Mo.), IT administrators are leveraging digital picture archiving and voice recognition transcription software--among other tools--to allow ER physicians to view X-rays on a computer and read the radiologist's dictated report before the patient has returned from the radiology department. Nurses are paged when a patient's EKG is abnormal, and are reachable over the wireless network. Cardiac patient are monitored over the network by a central unit …

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