Physicians and nurses are on the front lines caring for patients while at the same time living through unprecedented change in their workflows due to HITECH and meaningful use.  As a hospital’s IT organization rolls out technologies in support of meaningful use requirements, they are not just deploying systems; IT is effectively the catalyst for change working directly with clinicians and medical leadership to enhance overall care delivery.

The New York Times recently published an interesting article on the rising problem of medical identity theft. When the federal government last researched the issue in 2007, more than 250,000 Americans reported that they were victims of medical identity theft. Since that last report, most experts agree the problem has undoubtedly grown, in part because of the growing use of electronic medical records built without extensive safeguards. To exacerbate the situation, cleaning up after medical ID theft can be hindered by HIPPA compliance – the regulations protect the medical information of the ID thieves as well as you.

Congratulations to Imprivata customer Parkview Adventist Medical Center for recently earning the HIMSS Analytics Stage 6 designation! HIMSS Analytics highlights the Stage 6 award as recognition for hospitals that have made significant investments in healthcare IT and as well as implementing paperless medical records. This is a remarkable achievement for Parkview, considering that they’re one of only 42 hospitals out of 5,166 in the US to attain this level.

At Parkview Adventist Medical Center we're very proud of our accomplishment of being only one of a handful of hospitals that have been awarded with HIMSS Analytics Stage 6 status.Moving to an EMR format and a paperless environment requires a significant commitment from the executive team and from our clinicians. As we began our move to EMR, we had two major concerns. 1 – Can we maintain patient data security and HIPAA compliance in an electronic format? 2 – Will the clinicians buy into what we’re doing and use the technologies we provide? These are two critical components in achieving Stage 6 status.

I just left the annual Cerner Health Conference in Kansas City, where clinical and technical users of Cerner software gather to share ideas, best practices and technology solutions that are molding the future of healthcare.

I read a good article on FierceEMR recently surrounding a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey on electronic medical records (EMRs) that indicated that the secondary use of this information may be an organization’s greatest asset over the next five years. An overwhelming 76 percent of respondents agreed, and pointed to the abilities for mined data to decrease healthcare costs, predict public health trends and improve patient care. EMRs, with vendors such as Allscripts, NextGen and QuadraMed blazing the trail, have been a huge focal point of healthcare payers and providers, pharmaceutical companies and the general public with healthcare reform a primary platform of the Administration.

EMRs are the hot topic du jour and rightfully so with the tax incentives and federal grants tied to them, as well as the overall efficiencies they bring to the healthcare industry. The conversation is only now starting to talk about the role of secure access in deploying EMRs, and I project this will increase in importance and awareness in 2010.

To stay ahead of things, here are five security considerations organizations should plan for as they deploy EMRs...

This week, Computerworld announced the honorees for its annual Premier IT Leaders awards program, and we’d like to congratulate Imprivata customer Bill McQuaid of Parkview Adventist Medical Center for making the 2010 list! Bill was recognized for his innovative approach to electronic medical records (EMR) and the significant contribution he has made to Parkview’s healthcare IT infrastructure.

On Feb. 17, 2009, the HITECH Act was enacted, giving birth to new tiered civil monetary penalties for data breach violations, new powers to state attorney generals (AGs) for class-action pursuit and new guidelines for technology and methodologies that render data “unusable, unreadable or indecipherable.” While we previously covered how HITECH will make available $2.0 billion in grant money for organizations to transition to electronic medical records (EMRs) and deploy appropriate security measures, the time is now upon us for full compliance. Otherwise, organizations risk significant penalties from the department of Health and Human Services (HHS)/ Office of Civil Rights (OCR). The Healthcare & Technology blog has a good, quick post with some useful resources...

Greetings from the Eighteenth National HIPAA Summit in Washington, DC! It’s turned out to be an interesting event pulling in an array of people as it is co-located with the National Health IT Summit for Government Leaders, the National Health Information Exchange (HIE) Summit and the International mHealth Networking and Web Conference.

Mid-way through the week-long event, there are some notable highlights from the conversations I’m having, and from the chatter on the floor and the breakout rooms. In no particular order...