Despite the challenges, achieving meaningful use is far from impossible for providers who use the tools available to them, Brian C. Miller told a provider audience during a July 19 webinar hosted by the Rhode Island Quality Institute (RIQI), a regional extension center, based in Providence.

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI), selected in 2011 by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) to act as the approved accreditor for the ONC certification program, recently announced the first five accredited organizations.

To meet an expected rise in demand for health IT professionals as multiple federal initiatives encouraged hurried health IT adoption, the HITECH Act provided the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) with approximately $2 billion to prepare a workforce for increasingly high-tech healthcare settings. Its been nothing but smooth sailing since the ONC instituted its Health IT Workforce Development Program, said the presenters of a July 11 National eHealth Collaborative webinar.

In the longest natural history study of radiographic knee osteoarthritis (OA) to date, researchers demonstrated the annual rate at which women develop the condition is low, though if x-rays demonstrate possible osteophyte at baseline, knee OA was more likely to worsen, according to a study published in the July issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism.

Kaiser Permanente and the Social Security Administration (SSA) are launching a pilot program to exchange EHR information using the Nationwide Health Information Network.

While almost half of business administrators at hospitals or health systems say they are more than halfway to completing full EHR system deployment, many have doubts about the level of funding their organizations have planned to support it, according to the results of a poll conducted by U.S. audit, tax and advisory services firm KPMG.

A new analysis of federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association found clinics with higher scores as medical homes also had higher per-patient operating costs.

More than 100,000 healthcare providers are using EHRs that meet federal standards and have benefitted from the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs, according to CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC).