HIMSS

#HIMSS12 Day 3

by

Actually Day 3 was yesterday, but I’m just now getting around to putting some thoughts on paper. Best session I attended was Care Coordination in Practice: Managing Data Volume and Data Reconciliation. The presentation was all about big data and how we’re failing to use it appropriately in healthcare. The slide deck was great. It’s … Read more

#HIMSS12 Day 2

by

Today was the first real day of action for me at HIMSS12. I attended a couple of sessions and spent some time in the exhibitor area. The education sessions I attended were pretty vanilla. The most interesting of them was the first one I sat in on called “Got Smartphones? Leveraging Physician’s Smartphone Usage in … Read more

#HIMSS12 Day 1

by

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Annual Conference & Exhibition, i.e. HIMSS12, started today in Las Vegas. Actually a lot of pre-conference stuff started today. I didn’t do much besides get situated, print my registration badge, figure out where everything was, visit the HIMSS bookstore and Social Media Pavilion, etc. The real action for … Read more

Defining and Testing EMR Usability

by

Healthcare IT News: “The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s EHR Usability Task Force has released a white paper focusing on the level of usability in electronic medical records and their implementation at healthcare organizations. “Defining and Testing EMR Usability: Principles and Proposed Methods of EMR Usability Evaluation and Rating” identifies usability of software in … Read more

Talking “meaningful use” with our CIO.

by
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) is an $850 billion stimulus package passed by Congress aimed at encouraging economic growth in various industries through government spending. If you’re in healthcare, then you may be able to take advantage of $51 billion that has been allocated to the healthcare industry, $19 billion of which is aimed at the adoption and implementation of Electronic Health Records (EHRs), also known as Electronic Medical Records (EMRs). The only way to get your share of the money is to demonstrate that you are a “meaningful user” of an EHR system. The problem is figuring out what a “meaningful user” is.

My curiosity about being a “meaningful user” led me to the office of our CIO, where I casually asked him if we were going to qualify for any of the funds allocated by the ARRA. He informed me that “meaningful user” had not been completely defined, and is currently a hot topic of discussion.

Read more