A patient-centered future is in sight. That was the message delivered at the 2012 Consumer Health IT Summit.

An investigation revealed that two University of Miami Hospital employees were inappropriately accessing patient information from registration face sheets, and may have sold the information to a third party.

WARWICK, R.I.Providers may be frustrated with the growing number of requirements for Meaningful Use and public reporting programs, but representatives from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT reminded an audience of Rhode Island providers that there is a purpose to these initiatives.

Meaningful Use Stage 2 has been the talk of the healthcare community since the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Aug. 23 final rule was released, but the rule also contains changes to Stage 1 that providers who have yet to attest should know about.

Meaningful Use Stage 2 measures will propel electronic healthcare communication from its current state of disarray toward the ultimate goal of nationwide health information exchange, according to National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM.

Personal health information for approximately 55,000 patients at Indianapolis-based Cancer Care Group was compromised after a bag with a laptop containing the company's computer server back-up media was stolen from an employee's locked vehicle in July.

A point of increased emphasis for the meaningful use Stage 2 final rule is encryption of data at restthe patient-identifiable information stored on servers, hard drivers and portable devices.

Compromise and complexity are the main themes of the meaningful use stage 2 final rule, according to Jason Fortin, consultant with Impact Advisors based in Naperville, Ill. Several experts weighed in on the final rule and its potential ramifications.