A Massachusetts-based provider recently announced layoffs of 130 employees at three hospitals for budget issues that stem from the cost of its EHR implementation. 

Milford Regional Medical Center in Milford, Mass., has been recognized by HIMSS Analytics for achieving Stage 6 on the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Adoption Model (EMRAM).  

A data theft at an outside medical billing company has led to about 2,200 people treated at various University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) emergency departments being notified that their records may have been illegally disclosed by an employee of Medical Management LLC (MML). MML and its affiliates provide billing services to healthcare providers throughout the United States, including to UPMC’s physician group Emergency Resource Management.  

Almost 90,000 patients have been notified that their data may have been compromised after a former New York City Health and Hospitals Corp. employee improperly accessed and transmitted files containing protected health information.

CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, which serves the Washington, D.C., area, has reported a hack into a database containing 1.1 million customer records.

A new survey of 1,400 clinicians has found that a strong majority of medical practices with 26 or more members, some 60 percent, use one of only 10 different EHR products. Among practices with just one to three clinicians, the subset focused on 10 or fewer EHR products was a slim majority, just 51 percent. 

HIMSS Europe has signed a national partnership agreement with Nectics to improve the level of digital maturity in healthcare organizations across Italy. 

Wearable fitness-monitoring devices are not only motivating Americans to exercise more. When combined with providers’ use of wearable computers and cloud-based storage, they’re also pushing the healthcare system to ask whether HIPAA lines are being crossed.