patient records news from FierceHealthIT

As longer-term readers know, this newsletter has praised the VA's efforts with open-source EMR VistA since we first got started. VistA is, in short, a Read more...

Folks, please note, you're not going to open up FierceHealthIT and find that I'm arguing for hospitals to spend less time on HIPAA. While it's easy to argue the details in how it's implemented, I Read more...

> A foundation run by New York City's mayor has put up $27 million to help the city's doctors adopt EMRs. Read more...

Physicians may be reluctant to spend big bucks on EMRs, but when backed into a corner, they admit that such automation is important. In fact, a new survey found that 46 percent of doctors believe Read more...

Hospitals face ID security holesDoes this happen at your hospital? According to one vendor, it's not unusual for hospitals to leave a single user logged into terminals that access sensitive medical Read more...

Working with anonymized claims data from 11 million Humana enrollees, University of Miami researchers will begin work on a study of unexpected drug interactions and dangerous prescribing practices. Read more...

> Critics continue to argue that a nationwide EMR system could pose serious privacy risks. Article

> Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts has kicked off an effort under which it will analyze patient records to see which doctors meet clinical guidelines. …

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With HIPAA requirements upping the ante, health IT administrators must take the issue of user access control even more seriously than their colleagues in other enterprise IT environments. Increasingly, health systems are being forced to throw additional resources at the problem, conducting frequent privacy audits that look closely at user access permissions. User accounts that remain active after employees leave are a predictable--yet still vexing--problem HIT admins struggle to address. …

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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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Sort of, say attendees of a recent conference, presented by Paragon Development Systems, which brought together more than 300 corporate clients and representatives of vendor partners like Microsoft and Intel. Interestingly, even organizations that understand the importance of digital capability have decided to trust vendors less and themselves more. Case in point: …

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