Almost 800 million prescriptions were routed electronically in 2012, 44 percent of prescriptions and up from 570 million in 2011, according to Surescripts' annual National Progress Report and Safe-Rx Rankings.

Accreditation firm URAC is seeking public comment on standards and measures for its new accreditation program being developed for accountable care organizations (ACOs).

Health Level Seven International's (HL7) next generation standards framework is progressing and will be balloted as a Draft Standard for Trial Use.

Hospitals have made only incremental progress on errors, accidents, injuries and infections impacting patients, according to the spring 2013 update to the Leapfrog Group's Hospital Safety Score.

“We’ve put the technology infrastructure in place, but now we need to move forward, and we need people knowledgeable in making the small adjustments to make health IT successful,” said Larry Wolf, health IT strategist, Kindred Healthcare, and co-chair of the Health IT Workforce Development subgroup, at the Office of the National Health IT Coordinator’s (ONC’s) Health IT Policy Committee meeting on May 7.

Telemedicine must move to the forefront of medical efforts to achieve better than "marginal" improvement in efficiency and quality, according to an editorial published in Telemedicine and e-Health.

NORWALK, Conn., May 7, 2013  -- America has a serious drug problem, but it's not the one you think. A new survey commissioned by HealthPrize Technologies, a digital health company, found that 47 percent of people would rather take out the trash than take their prescribed medications, demonstrating how strongly Americans dislike taking their meds. More than a quarter of people (27 percent) would rather get a shot than take their prescribed medication and 10 percent would rather have a cavity filled.

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – The leaders of Mountain States Health Alliance (MSHA) and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) announced Friday that the two organizations have signed an affiliation agreement that will benefit MSHA, VUMC and the residents of Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia.