primary care news from FierceHealthIT

The Minnesota state legislature has approved a broad healthcare bill that would, among other things, require physicians, pharmacists and others who prescribe or dispense medication in the state to Read more...

> Here's an interesting telehealth project; a new pilot has linked hospitals in rural Ethiopia with India's leading cardiac institute. Read more...

A new paper issued by a think tank promoting HIT use suggests that for telemedicine to come into wider U.S. use, the government will have to lend a hand. The paper, by the Center for Health Read more...

Hospitals participating in Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts will soon be required to used computerized physician order entry under the insurer's new incentive plan. Under the health plan's Read more...

While it's fine to put greater emphasis on the adoption of EMRs, planners aren't paying enough attention to primary care issues, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians. For one thing, Read more...

EMRs have long been held out as a key tool in the fight to better manage chronic disease. Given their capacity to review records automatically--and let physicians know when standard steps weren't taken--the idea seemed like a no-brainer. In reality, though, EMRs in and of themselves may not help much when it comes to improving diabetes care, a new study suggests. The study, which was published in the Annals of Family Medicine, looked the care diabetics got in 50 primary care …

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HHS has awarded $103 million to 27 states, supporting programs a range of programs--including health IT initiatives--designed to improve the way Medicaid dollars are used. Congress has approved a total of $150 million for these "transformation grants," which will distributed over fiscal '07 and '08. While the states will be able to use the funds for a variety of purposes, key themes include the development of programs to encourage EMR use, clinical decision support tools or e-prescribing. …

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While it wasn't always the case in the past, nurses are playing an increasingly large role in shaping and rolling out EMR systems. That was definitely the case at Mountain States Health Alliance (MSHA), which was aggressive enough to begin moving from paper records to EMR in 2001. MSHA's network includes 11 hospitals with 1,462 beds, 21 primary care centers and 13 outpatient clinics.

While physicians often run EMR deployments, this time chief nursing executive Kathryn Wilhoit …

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Many health providers believe that, in theory, they could get a great deal of benefit out of participating in a regional health information organization (RHIO). Unfortunately, however, few small primary care practices are like to invest the time and money needed to link up with a RHIO. Writer Matthew Holt suggests that RHIOs might stand a better chance of attracting providers if they host and manage the data networking application themselves. About 20 percent of RHIOs are already …

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