OJAI, Calif.A first look at the 864-page final rule for Meaningful Use and EHR Certification shows that policymakers listened and responded to some physicians concerns, said speakers Pat Wise, RN, vice president of healthcare information systems at HIMSS, and Michael Zaroukian, MD, PhD, CMIO and associate professor of medicine at Michigan State University, during a presentation at the annual AMDIS Physician-Computer Connection Symposium Wednesday.

Parkview Medical Center in Pueblo, Colo., has signed an agreement with MobileMD to provide health information exchange (HIE) services to its physician and medical communities.

Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications, will soon make available Verizon Health Information Exchange (HIE) via cloud technology to share patient information electronically among healthcare providers.

The challenges that organizations face today with regard to clinical analytics are only going to be amplified in the future, as is evident in the later stages of meaningful use criteria, according to a report from Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Analytics.

Much of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 implementation activity will occur at the state level, as will provisions in healthcare reform that build on health IT and health information exchange, according to a report from eHealth Initiative.

Whether connecting competitive hospitals or just linking to community physicians, healthcare providers considered 38 unique vendors in their search for health information exchange (HIE) technology, according to a report from research firm KLAS. However, only five companies were considered in more than 10 percent of buying decisions, the company reported.

Expanding their earlier recommendations on osteoporosis screening, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has recommended that high-risk women under the age of 64 may be good candidates for densitometry screening.

Were in a transitional period between what the prior paradigm of testing certification included and what this new paradigm will include for purposes of meaningful use, said Steven Posnack, MHS, MS, director of the federal policy division at Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) during an informational call for health IT providers on the recently released final rule to establish a temporary certification program for EHR technology.