ATLANTAIn order to achieve true interoperability within a healthcare system, the IT leaders must consider the value of leaving physicians in the comfort zone, as well as adopting a patient-centric model, to which all data is anchored, according to a session Tuesday at HIMSS10.

ATLANTAIf providers are able to overcome organizational improvement imperatives, as well as some technological considerations, clinical decision support (CDS) systems can facilitate the adherence to challenging quality achievements, according to Jerome A. Osheroff, MD, chief clinical informatics officer at Thomson Reuters, who hosted a CDS discussion at HIMSS10 today.

The readiness of healthcare to deploy EHRs and EMRs, supported by ARRA and the HITECH Act, is not where it needs to be, especially in small physician practices, according to William Bria, III, MD, president of the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems (AMDIS) and CMIO at Shriners Hospital for Children in Tampa. The role of the CMIO is key to managing the process design necessary to implement and integrate EHRs and EMRs in order to attain meaningful useand making sure balance exists between technology and the medical staffs ability to absorb it. Please view the CMIO interview, which took place at the HIMSS10 conference this week.

The time frame and requirements for meaningful use, and the all-or-nothing incentive structure of the CMS incentives are major concerns of College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) members, said Sharon Canner, CHIME senior director of advocacy programs, in an interview with CMIO. CHIME has posted its response to the CMS proposed meaningful use rules, and Canner encourages providers to examine the document and adapt it in their own responses. See the CMIO video here. 

A high percentage of MRI and CT examinations are not meeting appropriateness criteria and those that don't typically yield negative results, suggesting a need for tools to help primary care physicians improve the quality of their imaging referral decisions, according to a study published online today in the March issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR).

Healthcare reform. Healthcare overhaul. Healthcare lite. As members of Congress and the Oval Office grit their teeth and search for consensus or attempt to thwart it, federal agencies and others are quietly making progress toward meaningful changes in the way health IT gets done. These behind-the-scenes efforts are small steps toward adapting healthcare for the future and possibly lowering the cost of care.  

Thursday, March 4, 11:15 AM - 12:15 AM Session leaders from the Department of Defense and the Veterans Affairs Administration will answer and discuss the following questions: What are some of the most critical imperatives for advancing healthcare delivery in the new age of automation? What are some of the most vexing challenges to leveraging technology as a tool in healthcare? What are some of the key opportunities for transforming care delivery? How does innovation change in the information age of healthcare?

Wednesday, March 3, 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM Conventional wisdom dictates that documents are bad and discrete data is good. But the Healthstory project offers a bridge between free-flowing narrative clinical documentation and semantically interoperable data.