The Community Oncology Alliance has moved a step forward in its development of an oncology medical home model, recently approving a set of 16 quality measures adhering to guidelines outlined by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.

The proposed rule released July 6 by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) supports long-term goals to reward providers for administering higher quality care at lower costs, according to the speakers of a July 17 CMS open door forum.

Gregory C. Reicks, DO, president of the Mesa County Physicians IPA, chairman of the regional health information exchange (HIE), Quality Health Network and family physician for 24 years, recently attended a White House/Department of Health and Human Services town hall meeting, representing the Colorado Beacon community. Reicks spoke with CMIO about the meeting and his Beacon experience.

The Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems (AMDIS) released the results of its annual CMIO survey on June 28 at the Physician-Computer Connection Symposium in Ojai, Calif. Moving beyond the numbers, William F. Bria, MD, chairman of the AMDIS board and director of informatics at Shriners Hospital for Children in Tampa, Fla., shared his thoughts on the survey with CMIO.

Despite the increasing prevalence of EHRs in healthcare settings, automated care quality measurement has yet to become a widespread reality because care guidelines are not always specified, data are not standardized and much of the information required for automation is contained in unstructured formats, according to a research report published in the June issue of the American Journal of Managed Care.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) may not directly affect health IT professionals as much as legislation like the HITECH Act and HIPAA, but thats no reason to overlook how the landmark 2010 universal healthcare bill builds upon past efforts to continue health ITs proliferation.

The medical information contained within EHRs is undoubtedly valuable to many of healthcares stakeholders, but its presentation as unstructured text often makes locating necessary information difficult, according to a study published July 6 in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. Using a novel method to detect named entities within EHRs, however, researchers demonstrated that constructing more effective information extraction systems is possible at low costs.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued a proposed rule that would update the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for calendar year 2013, increasing payments to family physicians by approximately 7 percent and to other primary care providers (PCP) by 3 to 5 percent.