The National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS), an annual U.S. representative survey of patient visits to office-based physicians, found that 41.5 percent of physicians reported using all or partial EMR/EHR systems (not including systems solely for billing) in their office-based practices in 2008. The comparable figure for the 2007 NAMCS was 34 percent.

Medical management company AdvancedMD Software has acquired PracticeOne, a privately-held provider of EHR software, for an undisclosed sum.

The Transportation Security Administration is looking to deploy whole-body scanners, which produce anatomically correct body images and can detect objects and substances concealed by clothing, at security checkpoints in U.S. airports. The American College of Radiology (ACR) has confirmed the safety of the scanners the TSA seeks to deploy.

With $19 billion of federal stimulus money in play to modernize healthcare systems, and a mandate for U.S. providers to use electronic medical records by 2013, many hospitals are starting to implement EMRs as a step toward electronic health records.

When word came out that more than 200 patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles had been accidentally exposed to extraordinarily high doses of radiation during CT brain scans, it spotlighted an issue that has roiled radiology for several years nowhow much radiation exposure is too much, what is as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA) and how can it be tracked?

Unity Health System has been awarded $800,000 in federal grants to expand its EMR system and to support computer physician order entry initiatives already in place.

The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) has certified EHR technology against proposed federal standards to support providers in qualifying for incentives under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). A total of 14 products have now been certified under its two new programsCCHIT Certified 2011 Comprehensive and Preliminary ARRA 2011launched on Oct. 7, 2009.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicare Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) are encouraging public comment on the two regulations issued Dec. 30 that lay a foundation for meaningful use of certified EHR technology. The regulations will help implement the EHR incentive programs enacted under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.