Strength for Variety, Excellence from Experience
| Do the math: Stanford docs could earn $44M in EMR incentives, while children’s hospitals chase Medicaid dollars |
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9 Jul 2010
As usual, there’s a burgeoning trend in technology and people in Northern California smell the money. “The push to implement electronic healthcare records could mean hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into Silicon Valley,” notes the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. This time, though, the money won’t necessarily be going to all the high-tech companies [...]  more info
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| Practices will lose value if they don’t adopt EHRs, says HIT coordinator |
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9 Jul 2010
Kudos to InformationWeek‘s Marianne Kolbasuk McGee for scoring a comprehensive interview with Dr. David Blumenthal, who’s been hard to pin down since he took the job as national health IT coordinator in April 2009. While Blumenthal is legally prohibited from discussing what’s going to be in the final rules for meaningful use until HHS actually [...] more info
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| eHealth Initiative finds significant gains in EMR adoption since 2007 |
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8 Jul 2010
Health IT adoption is gaining steam, but many have been unable to articulate the value of EMRs within their organizations and, significantly, to the public, a new report suggests. Still, people are optimistic about the future, but worry that the transition to ICD-10 coding and HIPAA 5010 transactions could slow momentum. The “National Progress Report [...] more info
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| CMS: Final meaningful use, certification rules sent to OMB |
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8 Jul 2010
How do we know the rules for meaningful use will be out any day now? CMS has sent its regulatory language to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review, the final stage in the rulemaking process. Health Data Management reports that OMB has received the regulations for meaningful use and the related [...] more info
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| Report: VoIP and SIP services to reach $3.9 billion in 2016 |
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8 Jul 2010
A new report from Frost and Sullivan has some high hopes for VoIP and SIP services. The research firm has painted another rosy picture where IP communications rule. The firm sees VoIP and SIP Trunking services beating the market downturn and instead build on their previous growth. According to the research firm’s ’North American VoIP Access and [...] more info
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| Counterpath updates Bria softphone |
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8 Jul 2010
Desktop and mobile VoIP software maker, CounterPath, has released a new version of its Bria softphone. The Bria 3.1 is being billed as the perfect softphone for replacing deskphones and integrating with new unified communications (UC) upgrades. The Bria 3.1 is a secure standards-based softphone that include HD 1280x720p video calls. The upgrade sees an improved user [...] more info
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| FCC says there’s 21 million VoIP lines out there |
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1 Jul 2010
The FCC’s Local Telephone Competition report has announced some big news for the VoIP industry. IP communications is on the rise with 21 million end-users taking advantage of VoIP subscriptions from cable, traditional telcos or VoIP providers. The report noted that there were 162 million wireline retail local telephone service connections as of the end [...] more info
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| CSC tells providers to press their vendors on EMR certification readiness |
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1 Jul 2010
Hot on the heels of a Computer Sciences Corp. report telling private health insurers to get with the federal EMR and quality-reporting incentive program, the same consulting firm has issued a paper advising hospitals and doctors to start assessing whether their chosen systems will meet newly published rules governing EMR certification in the short term. [...] more info
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| CMS: We’ll publish our ‘Meaningful Use’ final rule by July 14 |
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1 Jul 2010
Many dates have been thrown around regarding when CMS plans to publish its final rule for meaningful use. This highly anticipated regulation, of course, will spell out how providers and organizations can become eligible for HITECH’s electronic health record incentive payments. Some news outlets have reported that July 13 is the magic date. That sounds about right, give or take a [...] more info
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| Accenture report: Healthcare embracing cloud computing at same high rates as other sectors |
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28 Jun 2010
About 32 percent of healthcare organizations already use some form of cloud computing, and 73 percent report that they plan to move more applications to the cloud, according to a study from consulting firm Accenture. While healthcare trails most other sectors of the economy in terms of IT adoption, those numbers are in line with [...] more info
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