The Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center in Indianapolis will partner with the Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE) to exchange EHR information using the Nationwide Health Information Network.

Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, of Monterey, Calif., has selected RelayHealth's health information exchange (HIE) connectivity tool.

CareSpark, a regional HIE in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, became operational in 2008 and never looked back. The HIE has grown to encompass 1.3 million patients in its master patient index (MPI) with more than one million clinical documents being exchanged daily and 35 participating organizations. Also, the HIE plans to expand into the Knoxville, Tenn., region, says Pat Pope, provider relations coordinator for CareSpark, who recently spoke with CMIO.

Federal and state initiatives have come and gone, but for John Muir Health, the goal has remained the same: a patient-centric kind of information exchange, says Kathryn Bennett, MD, MBA, CMIO of the integrated delivery network based in Walnut Creek, Calif., located in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT predicts 50,000 additional health IT workers will be needed during the next five years to satisfy EHR meaningful use criteria. Thus, providers, payors and other stakeholders need to fill in workforce gaps with skill sets from other staff and focus on alternative ways to install and operate systems that realize economies of scale and therefore reduce health IT staff demands, according to a study from IT company CSC.

When the Northern Virginia Regional Health Information Organization (NoVaRHIO) goes live with its first step towards an eHealth Information Exchange connecting patients and physicians across the region, it will leverage GE Healthcare as an infrastructure partner.

In a letter to National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal, MD, the federal Health IT (HIT) Policy Committee's Privacy and Security Tiger Team recommended an approach to privacy and security that is comprehensive and firmly guided by fair information practices.

The North Carolina Hospital Association (NCHA) and the North Carolina Medical Society (NCMS) along with Moses Cone Health System and WakeMed Health & Hospitals have chosen health IT companies Thomson Reuters and CareEvolution to develop and launch the North Carolina Healthcare Information Exchange (NCHEX).