electronic health records

Health law attorney James Pyles, who has worked on privacy measures both for HIPAA and the HITECH Act, argued at the Second International Summit on the Future of Health Privacy in Washington, D.C., this week that current legislation doesn't go far enough to protect patients, especially given the advances in technology over the last decade and a half.

Two facts pop out of the  new Black Book Rankings survey  about health information exchanges (HIEs). First,  80 percent of hospitals and 97 percent  of responding physicians said they're not currently participating in HIEs, according to Healthcare IT News. Second, 85 percent of hospital executives said their HIE plans were driven mainly by the industry-wide move toward accountable care organizations and new methods of reimbursement. One reason for the very low participation of physicians in HIEs is that most doctors don't yet have electronic health records capable of exchanging data with other healthcare providers. While surveys show that more than half of physicians have some kind of EHR, a  recent government report  indicated that only about a third of doctors had systems that could be classified as "basic" EHRs--and that definition doesn't include the ability to exchange clinical information. Catherine DesRoches, senior scientist for Mathematica Policy Research,  told iHealthBeat  that she thinks only 12 percent to 15 percent of doctors have fully functional EHRs today. Assuming that's the case, why would just 3 percent of doctors say they participated in HIEs? Two possible reasons come to mind.

Data quality remains an issue in electronic health records, according to a West Virginia study of hypertension cases that found use of free text was a common cause of indentification errors.

It's bad enough that the number of security breaches of patient protected health information appears to be skyrocketing. But it feels downright creepy when the breach is at the hands of a hacker, as was the recent  attack  by Eastern European  hackers  that breached almost 800,000 Medicaid recipients in Utah.  And while a lot of hackers are attacking  EHRs  to steal the information within them for personal gain, many of them do it just for the fun of it, attorney Robert Hudock, with Epstein, Becker Green in Washington, D.C., said in an exclusive interview with  FierceMobileHealthcare . "It's very easy to scan for vulnerability and execute an exploit. People are curious," he said.   Hudock, who is a certified "ethical hacker" as designed by the International Council of e-Commerce Consultants, warns that information security and privacy concerns have become so widespread that providers are increasingly at risk of not being able to defend against them. In our interview, he shared several tips that HIT leaders can follow to protect their EHR and other systems.

Using an insulin order set within a hospital's electronic health record system can improve glycemic control for hospitalized diabetes patients, according to new research presented at the recent American Association of Clinical Endocrinology 21 st  Annual Scientific and Clinical Congress in Philadelphia.

EHRs will be used to manage the health data of U.S. athletes competing in the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics in London, which begin July 27, the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) recently announced.