quality data news from FierceHealthIT

You know, sometimes an answer is right in front of us. The American College of Physicians is handing you the cheat Read more...

Maybe it sounds like a crazy question, but how do you use your EMR system? Are you dedicating it entirely to supporting direct patient care, or do you expect to use it to conduct research, too? I Read more...

> Rhode Island is considering a bill which would address privacy and security issues related to data sharing within its planned HIE. Read more...

CMS announced last week that it would launch a five-year program under which it would pay participating physicians to report quality data using EMRs. Under the terms of the program, which officials Read more...

As demands for healthcare quality data increase, and the role of IT in improving quality has grown, there's been an increasing demand for hospitals to employ a chief medical information officer. Read more...

New York's health commissioner announced this week that the state would launch a new program aimed at encouraging health IT tools during 2007 and 2008. The program, which is part of Gov. Eliot Read more...

A Santa Cruz, CA-based health information exchange has developed a diabetes disease registry which has significantly improved providers' ability to identify and treat diabetics in their care. The network, which includes two hospitals, labs, radiology, pathology and transcription services, share information using technology from vendor Axolotl. About a year ago, the providers began using the technology to develop the registry, which identifies likely candidates for the disease and triggers …

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While collecting quality data for health plans, state and federal regulators still costs providers a bundle, implementing the right health IT infrastructure could ease the strain, according by a new report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Right now, either hospital medical records departments or medical group practice administrators end up collecting the data, a costly and time-consuming exercise which only gets more taxing from year to year. Still, until …

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Giving physicians yet another reason to deploy EMRs in their practices, one Republican and one Democratic Senator have jointly introduced a bill including quality reporting incentives for physicians. The provisions were expected, as part of a feverish round of deal-making which ended in CMS agreeing to drop its scheduled 5 percent Medicare payment cut for physicians. Doctors will begin …

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