Greenway Medical Technologies, an HP Healthcare Elite Partner, is collaborating with HP to offer medical practices custom EHR tools to assist care and automate healthcare processes.

Six health plans--Aetna, CDPHP, Hudson Health Plan, MVP Health Care, UnitedHealthcare and Empire BlueCross Blue Shield--in cooperation with Taconic Health Information Network and Community (THINC) paid $1.5 million this year to 236 primary care physicians in 11 practices that achieved patient-centered medical home (PCMH) recognition from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). The incentives were paid to providers for transformation to a PCMH and for services patients receive in a medical home.

Forty-seven percent of respondents to Beacon Partners 2011 Healthcare Reform Study believe that a repeal would have a negative impact on patient care. More than 300 attendees of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference in Orlando, Fla., weighed in, via an electronic survey, on the implications of Congress or the courts repealing all or components of the healthcare reform legislation.

A study in this months edition of Health Affairs estimates the total first-year costs of EMR implementation for a five-physician practice to be $233,297, with average per-physician costs of $46,659.

Outpatient imaging giant RadNet has acquired five additional Maryland imaging centers, bringing the providers total number of practices to 201.

The combination of low-dose photon-counting and contrast-enhanced tomosynthesis may provide a diagnostic benefit, according to a study published in the February issue of Radiology and presented at a symposium dedicated to breast cancer detection and ways of improving cancer detection with photon-counting technology at the 2011 European Congress of Radiology (ECR) in Vienna, March 3 to March 7.

Erlanger Health System, a Chattanooga, Tenn.-based nonprofit academic teaching center, will implement of a regional health information exchange (HIE) using GE Healthcares eHealth Information Exchange to help the flow of patient information among Erlangers four hospitals and 13 outpatient facilities.

Americans want and expect connectivity and convenience from their doctors office, according to the second annual HealthCare Check-Up Survey from Intuit Health. Seventy-three percent of Americans surveyed would use a secure online communication solution to make it easier to get lab results, request appointments, pay medical bills and communicate with their doctors office.