Beacon Communities, EHR Case Studies Bangor Beacon Community: Establishing Best Practices in Health Care
Catherine J. Bruno | May 24, 2011
Governance – it’s been the Achilles heel of more than one multi-stakeholder health information organization. As a collaborative partnership including hospitals, a primary care association, and other health care provider organizations, the Bangor Beacon Community realized early on that our success depended in large part on a solid governance strategy that linked the goals of the Beacon Community Program and the broader stakeholder community.
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Meaningful Use The Many Meaningful Uses of Health Information Technology
Emily Hogin | May 18, 2011
ONC’s core mission includes promoting the meaningful use of health information technology nationwide. By one definition, “meaningful users” are those who qualify to receive funding under the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Records Incentive Programs under the HITECH provisions of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This funding goes to health care providers who adopt certified electronic health records and use them in specific ways to improve patients’ health, increase transparency and efficiency, and engage patients and caregivers.
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Beacon Communities, EHR Case Studies What We Can Learn from the Beacon Communities on Their First Birthday?
Aaron McKethan | May 13, 2011
A year has passed since 17 diverse communities nationwide were notified by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) that they would receive Beacon Community awards. These critical resources empowered the Beacon Community Awardees (“the Beacons”) to build and strengthen their local health IT capacity, use health IT in innovative ways to improve the efficiency and quality of care they can provide their patients, and identify and disseminate these innovations and lessons-learned to others.
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From the ONC Desk, University-Based Training UBT Program: Preparing the Health IT Leaders of Tomorrow, Today
Alicia Morton | May 12, 2011
The modernization of health care through information technology calls for a much larger workforce than the one we currently have that will be required to help providers and hospitals make meaningful use of health information technology (health IT) including electronic health records (EHRs). In fact, there is a projected shortfall of approximately 51,000 qualified health IT workers over the next four years.
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From the ONC Desk E-Prescribing and Standards for E-Prior Authorization
Dr. Doug Fridsma | May 2, 2011
Recently, colleagues have raised questions about pending state legislation related to electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) and in particular the concept of electronic prior authorization (ePA) for medications. We thought it would be helpful to discuss what we know about the current state of e-prescribing and ePA. E-prescribing provides significant advantages in contrast to its paper analog. Coupled with other complementary technologies, such as drug-drug interaction checking, e-prescribing can improve patient safety, increase prescribing accuracy and efficiency, and lower costs by notifying providers of generic or preferred drug list alternatives.
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