The big news this week is, after months and months of providers calling for relief, the release of a new proposed rule designed to provide more flexibility in the use of certified EHR technology for Meaningful Use.

WATERTOWN, Mass. and MELVILLE, N.Y., May 21, 2014-- athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN), a leading provider of cloud-based services for electronic health record (EHR), practice management, and care coordination, and Henry Schein Medical, the U.S. Medical business of Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ: HSIC), the world's largest provider of health care products and services to office-based dental, animal health and medical practitioners, today announced a strategic agreement. Together, the companies will help physicians operate highly-efficient, successful practices, as well as provide high-quality care through the delivery and use of athenahealth's athenaOne® suite of EHR, integrated revenue cycle management, and patient communication services. The two companies will jointly market these services to Henry Schein's customers.

CARROLLTON, Ga.--Greenway Health™, a leading information solutions partner to healthcare providers nationwide, has received top recognition from Black Book’s 2014 Rankings – Ambulatory/Alternate Site EHR survey results. Greenway solutions have been acknowledged in the following categories: patient health data management and administrative processing, orthopedic/hand/spine surgery, neurosurgery, thoracic surgery, and community health center/federally qualified health center/rural health clinic. In addition to a number of other Black Book rankings through the years, this marks the fourth straight year Greenway has received this award for thoracic surgery.

NOQUALMIE, Wash.--CareAware(R), Cerner’s connectivity platform, and Spacelabs established a new benchmark in open system architecture, to streamline the clinical workflow for monitored patients. CareAware solutions provide a comprehensive strategy for robust medical device integration, alarm management and mobile-enabled care team communication. Spacelabs XprezzNet is a highly efficient network interface that allows Spacelabs monitoring products to communicate with CareAware.

More than 1,100 products are now on the federal government's list of those that meet some or all of the requirements for the 2014 Edition of Meaningful Use.

The vast majority--72 percent--of U.S. office-based physicians used EHR systems in 2013, according to a report from the National Center for Health Statistics.

The news just came out yesterday but it’s sure to have a significant impact for quite some time: Meaningful Use is getting more flexibility.

The federal government appears to have finally heard the calls for mercy regarding the timeline of the Meaningful Use program. A new proposed rule would provide eligible professionals, eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals more flexibility in how they use certified EHR technology to meet the program's requirements.