ARLINGTON, Va. -- The vast majority of U.S. doctors (93 percent) reported actively using electronic medical records (EMR) in an annual survey by Accenture (NYSE:ACN) of 3,700 physicians in eight countries: Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Singapore, Spain and the United States. And, showcasing the growing importance of health information exchange (HIE), nearly half (45 percent) of doctors surveyed said they regularly access clinical data outside their own organization, representing a 32 percent annual increase.

Dallas, Texas, May 08, 2013 -- Aprima Medical Software announced today that its award-winning EHR and Practice Management system will soon interface with the home healthcare market’s leading automation software, Homecare Homebase, a technology partnership expected to eliminate almost all of the duplicative documentation typically associated with home healthcare visits.

At this week’s Health IT Policy Committee meeting, Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM, national coordinator of health IT, called for workflow improvements to achieve better outcomes.

St. Louis, MO, May 08, 2013 -- In March, Rochester General Health System (RGHS) implemented EDCO® Health Information Solutions' point of care batch medical record scanning solution to create a completely electronic medical record for improved patient care. This partnership enables RGHS to scan documents on the hospital floors, in clinics, and in physician offices, and enables EDCO to index (file to the patient’s chart) all documents centrally in one hour or less. Using this model, RGHS is able to scan documents faster at the point of care, while maintaining the quality control achieved when records are indexed using a centralized approach.

From protests of the Meaningful Use program to a new electronic record user fee to the first decertification of an EHR product, a lot has happened in the past few weeks.

NASHVILLE, Tenn., May 5, 2013 -- digiChart, Inc., a privately-held company specializing in mobile patient engagement and specialty-specific technology solutions for OB-GYN physician practices, announced today that it has changed its name to Artemis. The company revealed its new brand today in New Orleans during the Annual Clinical Meeting of the American Conference of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. 

Studies continue to be released that decry the time physicians spend on computers rather than patients. These studies do our field a disservice because they don’t focus on the many ways EHRs have helped physicians do better for their patients.

BURLINGTON, Mass.--Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) announced that seven customers have been named Voice of the Customer Award winners from the 10,000 healthcare provider organizations using Nuance’s clinical documentation solutions. The awards, recently announced at Nuance’s 13th Annual user conference, “Conversations,” recognize leading hospitals and health systems that have improved quality of care, reduced costs and accelerated adoption of electronic medical records (EMR) using intelligent systems built on speech recognition and clinical language understanding.