Latest California Healthline Stories
The Next Five Years in Health IT: ONC’s Plan for the Future
The recently released Federal Health IT Strategic Plan outlines the federal government’s goals for using health information technology to improve health care over the next five years. The plan incorporates policy priorities included in the HITECH Act and the health reform law.
Wendy Everett of NEHI Discusses How New Technologies Can Improve Care, Cut Costs
Wendy Everett, founding president of the New England Healthcare Institute, spoke with California Healthline about efforts to encourage health care providers to adopt innovative electronic health systems that could improve health care quality and reduce costs.
Process Opens To Get Federal EHR Incentive Money
For Raul Ramirez, it has been a long time coming.
“This is a big day for providers, for the state. This is a big day for California,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez, chief of the Department of Health Care Services’ Office of Health Information Technology, was talking about this week’s initial processing of applications for up to $1.4 billion in federal funds for the state’s electronic health record incentive program.
Health 2.0 Conference Focuses on Patient-Centered Technology To Promote Wellness
Jonathan Attwood of Zamzee, Stephen Downs of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Chris Hewett of Mindbloom, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Farzad Mostashari and Christine Robins of BodyMedia spoke with California Healthline about new consumer-focused health innovations.
Data Take Center Stage at Health 2.0 Conference
As efforts to get consumers actively involved in health information technology mature, the focus at the Fifth Annual Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco showed an evolutionary shift away from getting the conversation started and toward deciding what to talk about.
Groups Tap Funding for Mobile Health Efforts Targeting Seniors With Chronic Conditions
David Lindeman of the Center for Technology and Aging, Nancy Pratt of Sharp HealthCare, René Seidel of the SCAN Foundation and Steven Wallace of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research spoke with California Healthline about how mobile health technology could benefit seniors.
Prescriptions, Lab Results, Clinical Care Data Top Priorities for Cal eConnect
Implementing electronic prescribing in California may prove a whole lot less challenging than instituting electronic transfers of lab results and sharing patient care information across unaffiliated health organizations. But all three goals of a network of health information exchanges in the state are going to take a whole lot more effort and coordination.
That was the message emanating from a conference conducted via webinar and telephone Friday hosted by Cal eConnect, the agency leading promotion and coordination of electronic health records in the state.
Cal eConnect is the state-designated not-for-profit organization charged with disbursing $38.8 million in money from the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act. The act was part of the 2009 economic stimulus package.
UC-San Diego Health System ‘Most Wired,’ Lands Top HIMSS Status
UC-San Diego Health System once again has been named one of the nation’s “Most Wired” hospitals by the American Hospital Association’s Hospitals and Health Networks. The hospital system also received a Stage 7 HIMSS Analytics score for achieving the highest level of electronic health record adoption.
CalHIPSO Still Has ARRA Health IT Money To Spend
More and more primary care providers are ditching their file folders and moving into the era of electronic health records, a trend marked by a milestone achievement in California and highlighted this week in Washington.
“Five or 10 years ago, it was a question of whether or not a provider would adopt electronic patient records; today it’s a question of when they will adopt it,” said Speranza Avram, executive director of the California Health Information Partnership and Services Organization.
Her Oakland-based organization announced last week it has enrolled more than 6,187 health care providers, mainly community health centers and small medical practices, in programs designed to assist transition to EHRs. The programs, funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, pay for consultants in regional extension centers across California to provide medical practices with training in implementing electronic patient record-keeping.
UCSF Medical Center Catches Up With EHR Deployment
UC-San Francisco Medical Center, which got a relatively late start in Bay Area hospitals’ march toward comprehensive electronic health record systems, took a major step recently by adopting a new integrated system.