The main goal of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which invested $30 billion into the EHR Meaningful Use (MU) incentive program, was improving quality of care. However, a recent study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found “no association” between EHR meaningful users and quality of care provided.

The 2014 State Healthcare IT Connect Summit early this month included presentations detailing several success stories for information exchange.

New Jersey is investing $1.57 million into the development of a new health information network.

Thanks to EHR adoption, an increasing number of hospitals are shifting their IT priorities toward systems like the enterprise data warehouse, which mines the EHR for insights to improve care and lower cost.

BUFFALO, NEW YORK – In partnership with the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH), HEALTHeLINK, Western New York’s clinical information exchange, launched an automated syndromic surveillance reporting service for its hospital partners.  Jones Memorial Hospital in Wellsville became the first facility to submit its syndromic surveillance data to NYSDOH via this method. Syndromic surveillance data is used to detect outbreaks and monitor disease developments. This project is the result of a Health Care Efficiency and Affordability Law (HEAL)-supported initiative to enhance the Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY) for electronic information exchange between Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIOs) and NYSDOH.

EHR customer satisfaction across the primary care physician sector has improved by leaps and bounds compared to six years ago.

An e-prescribing public health initiative called Park Prescription (Park Rx) is promoting the belief that the path to better health can be found in the park system.

Three pilots funded by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT successfully validated the potential to distribute population-level health queries and responses across different clinical platforms, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.