The leading Northern California non-profit health system Sutter Health has announced that over the summer, it will begin deploying a health information exchange (HIE) system aimed at eventually allowing its doctors and hospitals to securely share clinical information with other providers, both inside and outside its network of care.

Jerome Meites, a chief regional civil rights counsel at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), told attendees at last week’s annual American Bar Association conference in Chicago that he expects that over the next 12 months, the administration will collect even more in fines for violations of the privacy protections in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act than the roughly $10 million it collected in the past 12 months.

“How much should we spend on IT?” I have been asked this seemingly simple question for more than 30 years. The answer has always been the same. It depends on what you want to get back.

Outside a select number of health IT physician experts who have advised government bodies and companies developing telemedicine and electronic health record (EHR) products, most physicians have been in a reactionary mode as health IT has advanced. At the 2014 American Medical Association (AMA) Annual Meeting, the members approved two sets of recommendations that seek to take back some of the health IT leadership role they ceded in the years watching from the sidelines.

Outdated government policies are holding Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) back from making better use of technology to lower cost while simultaneously improving care say no less than 70 individual companies, institutions and groups in three separate letters sent to incoming U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of National Coordinator (ONC) has taken the brunt of criticism by health information technology (HIT) stakeholders, legislators and industry experts as to why, with millions in taxpayer dollars spent on incentives to encourage the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs), better HIT is still not saving the nation much money.

Move over MRs and CTs, surgical robots and new facilities. According to Premier Inc.’s spring 2014 Economic Outlook C-suite survey, this year’s top investment priority for the healthcare C-suite crowd is healthcare information technology (HIT).

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), it was able to accept nearly all of the more than 127,000 ICD-10 test claims submitted by approximately 2,600 providers, suppliers, billing companies and claims clearinghouses who participated in its test in early March.