Opinions about health care reform are plentiful, but Thomas H. Lee, MD, would rather hear solutions. When last year’s Affordable Care Act offered a new model called accountable care organizations (ACOs), Lee assessed the entity’s viability in his role as network president of Partners HealthCare System, based in Boston, Massachusetts.

A review of the top stories brought to you by CMIO and its sister publications during the past 12 months represents the wide range of issues facing CMIOs. Many are working to not only implement EHRs and computerized physician order entry, but to also ensure that the use of those systems is bringing about improved outcomes in both patient care and the bottom line.

A look at the most recent news related to interoperability indicates that there is an incredibly wide range of initiatives underway in this arena. There are so many different ways to advance the idea of interoperability, from studies on registries and patient access to medical records to statewide initiatives regarding commitment to EHR adoption and a data locator on a health information exchange.

Clinical decision support (CDS) systems and alerts have the potential to help providers make sense of a vast web of medical knowledge, but most dont differentiate between information that is urgent and information that may be less immediately relevant, alerting providers to both trivial medical concerns and life-threatening circumstances, according to Aaron S. Kesselheim, MD, of the division of pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacoeconomics at Bostons Brigham and Womens Hospital.

The migration from paper charts to EMRs offers the opportunity to provide access to patients, consultants and other caregivers. Electronic records also offer potential for greater transparency, improved efficiency and decreased costs. However, some think that sharing doctors notes electronically could lead to greater patient confusion and more work for the physician. Two articles published in the Dec. 20 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine use survey data to shed light on both sides of the issue.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has informed the American College of Radiology that operational limitations will prevent them from applying the imaging professional component Multiple Procedure Payment Reduction (MPPR) to group practices beginning Jan. 1, 2012. Therefore, CMS will not apply the professional component MPPR for imaging services performed by separate physicians in the same group practice for 2012. 

A smoking cessation program called txt2stop, a text messaging service that sends participants motivational messages, delivered positive, short-term results for smoking cessation rates at six months, according to the txt2stop study from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and published online June 30 in The Lancet.

Organizations on the leading edge of health IT are reaping impressive results from their efforts in clincial decision support through the installation of electronic records, computerized physician order entry and other systems. Better use of data is resulting in measurable improvements in outcomes, utilization and more.