March 2009 - EMR and HIPAA

North Dakota Hospital Uses Social Media to Communicate

As most of you know, I’m a big fan of social media. I live it and love it. I honestly think that’s one reason why this blog has done so well. So, I was really interested to see how Innovis, a hospital in North Dakota, was using Twitter and...

Published Tue, Mar 31 2009 12:10 PM by EMR (EHR) and HIPAA

Guest Post: One EHR Vendor’s Story and Challenges of Developing an EHR for All

I recently asked a developer of an EHR to do a guest post for me to tell the story of their EHR company. The guest post is a little light on the details of how the EHR came to be, but Ash does offer a good perspective about the challenge an EHR has of...

Published Mon, Mar 30 2009 2:55 PM by EMR (EHR) and HIPAA

HITECH Act’s Impact in 3 Simple Phrases

The HITECH Act and EHR stimulus has become one of the most popular topics on this blog (for obvious reasons). Today I came across someone who did a good job summing up much of the HITECH act in 3 simple phrases (a few minor modifications on my part):...

Published Sat, Mar 28 2009 7:45 PM by EMR (EHR) and HIPAA

Information Therapy and PHR

I recently came across an interesting term that I’d never heard of: Information Therapy. Here’s the wikipedia description of Information Therapy: Information therapy works by engaging the consumer in the process of care. Unlike health information...

Published Wed, Mar 25 2009 10:48 AM by EMR and HIPAA

CCHIT and Open Source EMR

I previously posted about how the selection of CCHIT as the certification criteria for the HITECH act excludes open source EHR. I took more of a practical look at why an open source EHR product wouldn’t ever pay for CCHIT certification. I recently...

Published Tue, Mar 24 2009 8:59 AM by EMR and HIPAA

EHR Software Makes Doctors Secretaries

A man I really respect in regards to EMR discussions made an off hand comment at EMRUpdate (sorry I don’t have the direct link) that the reason doctors don’t want to implement EHR is because they don’t want to be secretaries. I think...

Published Mon, Mar 23 2009 11:04 AM by EMR and HIPAA

EMR versus EHR Rant

If you’ve been reading this blog for a little while, you might have noticed that I’m really struggling with whether I should use the term EMR or EHR. You can read about the difference between EMR and EHR on the wiki. The problem I have is...

Published Sun, Mar 22 2009 11:27 AM by EMR and HIPAA

EHR Vendors Join Twitter

I recently posted about CCHIT joining Twitter. Seems like a decent number of EMR and HIPAA readers are also on Twitter, because I’ve been getting a pretty good number of new followers in the HIT and EMR field. As my 1423 followers and 2302 updates...

Published Sat, Mar 21 2009 3:22 AM by EMR and HIPAA

Plain vs. Sexy EHR Features

One of the major challenges in comparing various EHR software has to do with comparing features. For example, think about the feature we call document management. I can pretty much guarantee you that EVERY EHR vendor out there can easily answer that they...

Published Fri, Mar 20 2009 3:18 AM by EMR and HIPAA

EHR is the Life Blood of a Practice

I’m often amazed at how many people underestimate the impact that an EHR implementation will affect a practice. Actually, maybe far too many people understand this and that’s why EHR adoption is so low. What worries me is that so many of those...

Published Thu, Mar 19 2009 3:04 PM by EMR and HIPAA

CCHIT Certification’s Ties with EMR and HIPAA (this website)

I’ve definitely said my fair share of things about CCHIT. Sometimes I wonder what CCHIT thinks about my comments. I’m really not trying to be mean, hurtful or ugly about it all. I just want to share my own feelings about the certification...

Published Thu, Mar 19 2009 9:10 AM by EMR and HIPAA

Advice for EMR Selection Consultants

A recent comment asked me what I thought about this person becoming essentially an EMR selection consultant. I started to reply in the comment, but it got so long that I decided that it was worthy of it’s own post. Plus, then all the EMR and HIPAA...

Published Thu, Mar 19 2009 3:34 AM by EMR and HIPAA

Story Sounds Better Saying the EHR Stimulus Will Work

I’ve been reading a lot of news stories all over the web talking about how great the $18 billion of EHR funding is going to be. They talk about the savings in health care (which are desperately needed) and the saved lives thanks to EHR. Most of...

Published Wed, Mar 18 2009 2:49 PM by EMR and HIPAA

EMR Core Versus Specialty Functionality

The other day I was thinking about the way EMR software has been designed. A common complaint by specialists is that a certain EMR was designed for General Medicine, but would not work for [insert specialty here]. Then, I asked myself the question “Why...

Published Tue, Mar 17 2009 12:57 PM by EMR and HIPAA

EMR Install Base - According to Vendors

I was recently reading a post on EMRUpdate (great EMR Forum) by a man I highly respect who goes by CEOMike. In his long post, he made the following short analysis that I thought was really interesting: I thought by now you would have figured out EMR vendors...

Published Tue, Mar 17 2009 3:57 AM by EMR and HIPAA