TTA Archives 2005-2012

The Chicago-based Institute of Medicine announced last week a year-long study of medical errors related to EMRs and other electronic patient data that will eventually lead to recommendations for improving EMR safety. According to the New York Times, EMRs eventually could be regulated by the FDA. Interestingly, the Federal Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology provided the IOM with $989,000 to convene the panel and produce the report. This follows on recent reports of $6 billion in healthcare data breaches [TA 2 Dec], yet the EHR that claims to be the fastest growing–PracticeFusion–is cloud-based [TA 2 Dec] and with the usual security concerns. FierceEMR, ‘IOM kicks off study’. Meanwhile, among hospital CIOs who are CHIME members (College of Healthcare Information Management Executives), qualifying for ‘meaningful use’ looks much less likely for first half 2011, dropping to 15% believing their organizations would qualify, down from August’s not-all-that-confident 28%. FierceEMR, ‘Meaningful use readiness.’