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.

Eighty-nine new accountable care organizations (ACOs) serving 1.2 million Medicare patients in 40 states and Washington, D.C. officially entered into agreements with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as of July 1.

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.

Health care reform has catalyzed providers—especially independent hospitals—to consider the business models and structures within which they will operate going forward. As such, many will contemplate mergers or acquisitions, but there is much to consider before pursuing such a path.