The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology announced that three additional electronic health record products designed for use in acute care hospitals have received CCHIT Inpatient EHR 2007 certification status, bringing the total number of certified inpatient products to nine, or an estimated 36 percent of inpatient EHR vendors. The new CCHIT-certified products are:
Cerner Millennium PowerChart 2007 by Cerner Corporation
Advanced Clinical Systems, MAGIC 5.6 by Meditech
INVISION Clinicals Version 27.0 with Siemens Pharmacy and Med Administration Check (MAK), Version 24.0 by Siemens Medical Solutions
American Fork, Utah-based NovaRad has secured NovaPACS contracts with three hospitals in New Mexico, South Dakota and Texas. NovaPACS offers fast image retrieval, full-feature viewer with intuitive interface, and seven-year, on-site archive with offsite emergency back-up, said NovaRad representatives.
As CFOs in any industry can attest, you have to make sure you get the numbers right. If you don't--thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley--the penalties can be intense, including jail time if you happen to work for a public company. But as Spectrum Health CFO Michael Freed says in this audio interview, strategy trumps finance. To be effective in modern times, a CFO has to develop a financial plan that helps the CEO achieve the goals he's outlined in his strategy. To the extent he or she can, Freed says, the CFO's job is to give the CEO enough time and warning to adapt his or her strategic plan to fit the financials. I hope you'll enjoy this enlightening clip from a trusted adviser of mine.
RadCentre RIS from iSoft now offers real-time speech recognition, and with the new feature dictations appear instantly as screen text to produce critical radiology reports and share patient diagnoses more quickly. RadCentre features Intelligent Speech Interpretation to produce accurate radiology reports with a minimum of human intervention, say iSoft representatives.
Both proponents and opponents of electronic prescribing say that the technology will be one of the biggest and most contentious health IT issues this year, according to a report.
About 80 percent of Internet users in the United States have searched the Internet for information on medicine and health, according to a 2006 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. While the Internet is a great tool to look up symptoms, research specific conditions, look for drug interactions and join discussions with other people with the same ailments, doctors and other health experts say it's no substitute for a doctor.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is set to test a personal health record program for Medicare recipients in South Carolina. The South Carolina project will offer PHRs to 100,000 participants in Medicare's fee-for-service program. Until the South Carolina program, Medicare offered PHRs only to participants in certain plans that were already making PHRs available to their members.
Carol.com is the first attempt in the country to create an online medical marketplace. The sitewill allow people to "buy" on an à-la-carte basis the medical services they want done. In doing that, the site's creators are riding the leading edge of a wave of change headed toward consumers just as questions about how to cure the nation's chronic healthcare crisis are resounding.
If Kaiser Permanente's Fresno, CA, hospital had acted on complaints and kept a closer watch over its medical staff, two babies might still be alive, according to a report from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS began investigating the hospital in October after doctors and nurses had complained repeatedly to higher-ups about perinatologist Hamid Safari's medical and interpersonal skills.
The revival of Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta will reach a landmark as the hospital board considers a final agreement to relinquish much of its power to a new nonprofit group. The Grady board's expected approval of the management change marks a critical moment in the effort to save the financially imperiled hospital. Business and political leaders have made clear that their promises to increase financial support for Grady are tied to the management change.
