pricewaterhousecoopers news from FierceHealthIT

A group of participants cutting across the employer, IT vendor and healthcare provider sectors announced last week that they'd come together to create a shared framework for health information... Read more...

If you believe PricewaterhouseCoopers, EMRs may soon begin to fulfill their often-cited purpose: they'll actually start squeezing costs from the system. Healthcare benefit costs and average medical costs increases should begin to slow in 2008, at least in part due to increased EMR and health IT use, according to research by PwC. Other factors behind slowing costs include lower spending on prescription drugs, employer use of wellness programs and greater cost-sharing with employees. Release

New research from PricewaterhouseCoopers has drawn the provocative conclusion that there's a meaningful correlation between hospital IT investment and risk-adjusted mortality rates. PwC's research also found that eventually--once a hospital has invested enough--health IT can have a significant impact on hospital costs, operations and quality of care. The study's results are likely to echo loudly in CIO circles, as they do a lot to bolster arguments for a vigorous IT capital …

... Read more...

>   Apparently, consumers aren't convinced that EMRs can improve their care. Article

>  Web 2.0 applications emerge for RHIO development. Article

>  In a new report, PriceWaterhouseCoopers underscores the obvious: HIT to be big in '07! …

... Read more...

Well, it looks like the stick of bad PR, regulatory enforcement and legal action has more clout than the business case carrot for most healthcare companies when it comes to their relatively tepid investments in e-security, says a new survey by the Global State of Information Security. Spending to protect electronic health records (EHRs) and other sensitive e-data …

... Read more...