Washington state's attorney general (AG) has ruled that a donation of money by a clinical lab to physicians to defray the cost of an EHR violates the state’s anti-rebate law when the donations are made to physicians who refer specimens to those labs.

Market research firm KLAS released its 2012 rankings of health IT vendors and what they have to offer. Nearly 1,000 products and services were considered for the report and a variety of healthcare executives, managers and department heads from more than 6,000 organizations contributed a total of 19,802 unique evaluations to inform rankings.

The Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT (ONC) held its annual meeting this week, reviewing its 2012 achievements and looking to next year’s goals. “If we thought healthcare was just fine, we wouldn’t be here today,” said Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM.

“If we thought healthcare was just fine, we wouldn’t be here today,” said Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM, national coordinator of health IT, speaking at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s (ONC) annual meeting on Dec. 12.

Physician adoption of EHRs and other electronic tools to help improve care, safety and coordination of healthcare continues to rise, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) reported in a data brief.

Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City is the winner of the Health Information Management and Systems Society's (HIMSS) 2012 Enterprise HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence. Since 1994, the Nicholas E. Davies Award recognizes excellence in health information technology, specifically excellence in use of the EHR to successfully improve quality of care and patient safety.

The health IT dashboard, an interactive online supplement to public data available from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, now includes summary data on the Medicare EHR incentive programs.

EHR adoption rates among office-based providers continued ticking upward in 2012, the second year of the incentive program for demonstrating Meaningful Use. More than 70 percent of National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey respondents reported using EHRs, according to a December data brief from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.