U.S. hospitals could save 950,000 lives and approximately $93 billion over five years by replicating practices achieved by a national performance improvement collaborative, according to findings based on hospital results from members of the Premier healthcare alliance QUEST collaborative.

The resounding message at the first of three scheduled U.S. House of Representatives Energy & Commerce hearings on health IT is that FDA must act soon to finalize a 2011 guidance document on its oversight of mobile medical apps to eliminate the cloud of uncertainty on the matter. 

It should come as little surprise that interoperability was a major focus of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s (HIMSS) 2013 annual convention. Advances in so many other initiatives—Meaningful Use, information exchange, patient engagement and more—depend on interoperability.

There are lots of different definitions for patient engagement, said Christine Bechtel, vice president of the National Partnership for Women & Families. That disparity was the impetus for an article published in the February issue of Health Affairs, which reviews numerous studies on patient activation and how healthcare organizations can better utilize patients to improve outcomes and lower costs.

Medical groups reported an average turnover rate of 6.8 percent in 2012, according to the 8th annual Physician Retention Survey from Cejka Search and the American Medical Group Association (AMGA). The 2012 physician turnover rate rose from 6.5 percent in 2011, which was significantly higher than the lowest rate of 5.9 percent reported in 2009 at the depth of the recession, according to researchers, and exceeded 6.4 percent reported in 2005, the first year data were collected.

Last year was the worst for IT services contract activity since 2002, according to research from Ovum. Performance in the three months to the end of December 2012 fell significantly below the levels seen in the same period of 2011, ensuring that annual IT services contract activity fell to its lowest level for 10 years, both in terms of total contract value (TCV) and deal volume.

Crossing into new markets, Calif.-based Humetrix showed off its mobile health information exchange app iBlueButton at the UK National Health Service Innovation Expo 2013 last week. The event, which took place on March 13 and 14 in London, was geared to European health IT professionals.

“Stage 3 rulemaking is not happening until next year. Let’s spend 2013 on implementation of Stage 2 capabilities,” recommended Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM, national coordinator of health IT during the March 14 Health IT Policy Committee meeting. “We need to learn from what’s working and what’s not working.”