A question: What is the opposite of health IT return on investment?

The answer: Unintended financial consequences, or UFCs, for short. Read more …

“No aspect of health IT entails as much uncertainty as the magnitude of its potential benefits.”

A few years into the Meaningful Use program, it seems this quote from a 2008 Congressional Budget Office report entitled “Evidence on the Costs and Benefits of Health Information Technology” may have been written with the assistance of a crystal ball.

Fast forward to 2013. Read more …

In these politically polarized times, Americans expect Republicans and Democrats to disagree on every detail right down to what day of the week it is. This is especially true in the posturing hurly-burly of the House, where members can appeal to the few select priorities of a gerrymandered district to win re-election. Read more …

Technology Reform Act could be most significant reform of federal tech acquisition in more than 20 years

Carlsbad, Calif. —Medsphere Systems Corporation, the leading provider of affordable and interoperable healthcare IT platform solutions, today issued a public statement of support for the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Act (FITAR). The House legislation (H.R. 1232), jointly sponsored by California Republican Darrell Issa and Virginia Democrat Gerry Connolly, recently moved with unanimous bipartisan support from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to the floor for a full vote. Read more …

I want to begin by sharing well-known information for the sake of comparison. Both the Apple and Google Android platforms welcome the introduction of new and (sometimes) highly valuable functionality through plug-n-play applications built by completely different companies.

You know that already. Read more …

Houston, TX, and Carlsbad, CA – March 6, 2013—Medsphere Systems Corporation, the leading provider of affordable and interoperable healthcare IT platform solutions, today announced that Houston’s IntraCare Behavioral Health will implement the company’s OpenVista® electronic health record (EHR).

Click here to read the release in its entirety.

Anyone who understands the importance of continuity of care knows that health information exchange is essential. How are we supposed to cut waste and duplication from the healthcare system and truly focus on patient welfare if doctor B has no idea what tests doctor A conducted, or what the results were? Read more …

We should have seen it coming, really. It was entirely predictable, and the most recent RAND report proves it.

We incentivized comprehensive IT adoption, making it easier to bill for every procedure, examination, aspirin, tongue depressor, kind word and gentle (or not) touch without first flipping the American healthcare paradigm on its head, if such a thing is even possible. Read more …

What a week! First the disgraced cyclist confession and later the baffling college-football-player-and-his nonexistent-(dead)-girlfriend story, with the RAND report sandwiched somewhere in between. It’s positively a scandal-palooza. Read more …

Does anyone in their right mind believe that these are the best of times in healthcare or health IT?

Scratch that.

Does anyone besides Judy Faulkner and Neal Patterson believe these are the best of times? Read more …

Faced with healthcare reform and any number of other enduring challenges, hospitals shouldn’t expect next year to be any easier than the one that’s currently winding down. Yes, that’s my grand prognostication for 2013—things will still be difficult. Read more …

The recently concluded election was seen by many as a referendum on the 2010 Affordable Care Act, now widely known and even embraced by the president as Obamacare. President Obama’s re-election ensures that the implementation of reform will continue, but how a divided Congress deals with it while trying to control federal spending will remain an open question for some time. Read more …

Two recent surveys clearly show that, when it comes to enterprise EHRs, physicians prefer VistA.

In a 2012 survey by Medscape, 21,000 physicians in 25 specialties were asked to evaluate enterprise EHRs in hospital-based health delivery networks based on the following characteristics: Read more …

A study recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) identifies the implementation and adoption of Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) functionality as the number one barrier for hospitals working toward Meaningful Use Stage 1. Read more …

When it comes to IT system decisions, healthcare organizations often ask a key question: Should we buy it or should we build it ourselves? Open source offers a new option to this traditionally binary decision. This option becomes more compelling when the open source solution is the most broadly deployed EHR in the world—the VistA system from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Instead of Buy vs. Build, it’s the Best of Both.

Read more …