Electronic Health Records

Healthcare is experiencing an unprecedented transformation.

Motivated by the need to meet new regulatory requirements in the U.S., including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and to receive incentives from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s (ARRA’s) Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) provision, many healthcare providers are investing to modernize their legacy IT infrastructure and clinical applications. In addition to meeting compliance issues, these early adopters are discovering numerous advantages from their investment in IT – not only in cost savings, but also in improved patient care, tightened information security, advanced collaboration, increased transparency and trackability, and ‘connected care.’ Keep reading →

Medicare failed to follow some basic safeguards in switching its paper-based health record system to electronic health records, a key part of the current administration’s plan to save millions of dollars and provide better health care, the HHS Inspector General said in a report released Thursday.

In the report, the IG for Health and Human Services said Medicare did not put in place appropriate technology tools to make sure the information provided by hospitals and doctors about their EHR implementation was accurate. At stake were financial awards given to health providers if they adopted electronic records beginning in 2011. Keep reading →


Veterans, Medicare recipients and military health care beneficiaries today can download digital files of their available personal health data on a computer, smartphone or flash drive, providing them with instant access to critical information and promoting personal management of their own health care.

This groundbreaking development is possible because of additions to three government websites, all now containing a “Blue Button” icon that allows individual users to login, view, print and save copies of their available personal health information, some of which is extracted from organizational health records. More than 250,000 people had downloaded their health information through the fledgling Blue Button initiative by the spring of 2011, but there is a potential for millions of people to use the system. Keep reading →

The Department of Veterans Affairs has reached the final stretch of what’s been a long effort to employ technology that allows private hospitals access to veterans’ medical records that can be used to evaluate health history and deliver better care.

The move is one of many within the VA as it strives to overhaul its image and provide the best care for America’s veterans and protect the security of their records. Keep reading →

The chief technology officer for HHS said efforts to liberate health records and data within the federal space will spur innovation in the public and private sectors that improves Americans’ health and health care.

“We’ll save the world with health data and create jobs.” – Todd Park Keep reading →