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by Eliot Muir June 2011 – HL7 was originally a grassroots movement. Vendors and providers got together and looked at the typical content of the real world interfaces they were implementing and put together a rough, yet relatively practical, standard which we know today as HL7 Version 2.X.  Implementers played a big part of that… Read more »

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by Michael (Mac) H. McMillan May 2011 – Six years after the HIPAA Security Rule has gone into effect, 31,000 plus breaches of patient information have been reported. What’s especially disturbing is that the overwhelming majority of these incidents were either self-inflicted by the organization or totally avoidable.   This month the National Institute of… Read more »

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By Cathy Cather April, 2011 – One of the goals of health reform is to improve the nation’s health care system by providing higher quality health care for more individuals at a lower cost.  Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) may play a leading role in achieving this goal.  On March 31, 2011, HHS issued proposed regulations… Read more »

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 by John Moran (Reprinted with permission by the author) EDITOR’S NOTE: Last year at this time, we asked John Moran, executive media coach for Schwartz Communications, to share some ideas about making the most of trade shows. Given the article’s enthusiastic reception and positive response, we thought it might be helpful to offer it here… Read more »

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By Ray Falci December 2010 – The passage of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) in 2009 which led to the subsequent  “Meaningful Use” Standards, and Health Reform in 2010, have clearly added considerable tailwinds to the broader Healthcare Information Technology (HCIT) Sector. These developments have in some ways extended earlier trends toward redefining… Read more »

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By Jodi Amendola December 20, 2010 – The tumult within the healthcare IT (HIT) space, driven to a deafening roar by impending meaningful use, ICD-10 and healthcare reform, has presented HIT vendors with tremendous communication challenges. Faced with fierce competition, rapid consolidation and new healthcare initiatives, it’s time to embrace integrated multi-channel marketing and public… Read more »

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By David Winn, M.D., FAAFP November 1, 2010 – U.S. deficit spending has fallen off the cliff. The Congressional Budget Office forecasts U.S. deficit spending “forever.” Unfunded mandates for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security exceed 50 trillion dollars and U.S. debt to GDP is at a historic 84%. Given the magnitude of the country’s debt,… Read more »

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By Jim Gibson October 2010 – There’s a point through which every early stage HIT company must pass on its road to viability. If you’re a CEO, you know this, and your investors most assuredly know this. Handling it well will have lasting effects on your company and contribute significantly to its ultimate success. Poor… Read more »

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By Ryan Howard May 2010 – Web-based Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are stepping onto the main stage as the most likely way smaller and solo practices will be able to adopt EHRs in a “meaningful” way, in time for the 2011 ARRA/HITECH incentive moneys.  Web-based software has also been referred to as cloud-based computing, SaaS,… Read more »

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By Ian Duncan September 2010 – The health reform plan enacted by Massachusetts in April 2006 has been the subject of considerable scrutiny, both on its own merits and because it is a model for the national reform recently enacted by Congress.  This Massachusetts legislation reformed insurance markets, subsidized insurance coverage for a large subset… Read more »