NEW ORLEANS—“Healthcare is broken not just when it comes to the cost but in so many other ways,” said National Coordinator of Health IT Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM, delivering a keynote address at the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) annual convention. “Healthcare is broken as a system…as a lack of systems.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is putting more weight behind health IT, health information exchange (HIE) in efforts to securely exchange information across providers, reduce hospital readmission rates and improve overall quality of care. 

NEW ORLEANS—It’s difficult, and perhaps impossible, to kill two birds with one stone. But Hawaii Pacific Health achieved both financial return on investment (ROI) and improved population health with its EHR deployment, its leadership team shared during a March 5 session at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) annual conference.

NEW ORLEANS—The point of Meaningful Use is to learn, said Seth Foldy, MD, MPH, senior advisor for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Office of Surveillance, Epidemiology and Laboratory Services, speaking during the Physicians’ IT Symposium during the Health Information and Management Systems Society’s (HIMSS) annual convention. The symposium is co-hosted by the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems (AMDIS).

“I don’t think we’ve saved lives by documenting more,” said Clement J. McDonald, MD, director of the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications, during his presentation at the Physicians’ IT Symposium during the  March 3 Health Information Management and Systems Society’s (HIMSS) annual convention. The symposium is co-hosted by the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems (AMDIS).

NEW ORLEANS—Meaningful Use (MU) served as not an IT project but “recognition of something we had already done,” said Leland A. Babitch, MD, MBA, assistant professor of pediatrics at Wayne State University School of Medicine and former CMIO of Detroit Medical Center, who presented the inpatient perspective of MU during the AMDIS Physicians’ IT Symposium during the HIMSS annual convention.

NEW ORLEANS—Meaningful Use certified technology is the starting point, but not the goal, for healthcare transformation, said Karen M. Bell, MD, chair, Certification Commission for Health IT, during a March 3 educational session at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) annual conference.

iMedicor has finalized a series of strategic acquisitions and additions to its management, technology and sales teams. The changes include the acqusition of HITS Consulting Group, a New York City-based firm that provides Meaningful Use and EHR consulting services to healthcare facilities and ClariDIS, a data mining and data aggregation business, based in Cape Cod, Mass.