Articles by Industry Expert

Health IT: Where We Stand And Where We Need To Go

By Karen DeSalvo – I am optimistic about the bright future we have to leverage health information technology to enable better health for everyone in this country. One year ago, we called upon the health IT community to move beyond adoption and focus on interoperability, on unlocking the data, so it can be put to the many important uses demanded by consumers, doctors, hospitals, payers, and others who are part of the learning health system.

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Dispatch from China

By John Halamka MD – The first part of this week I have been in China – Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Xuzhou as part of a Harvard Medical School program to help the Chinese create a learning healthcare system while they build 1000 new hospitals and train 300,000 new primary care givers.


Don’t Forget the Paper: Records and Policies

By Matt Fisher – Another HIPAA breach settlement announcement and another lesson from the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”). Cornell Prescription Pharmacy (“Cornell”) is a single location pharmacy located in Colorado that will pay OCR $125,000 to resolve allegations of a variety of HIPAA violations. When the facts of the circumstances are described, it will likely raise questions as to why the settlement was so low.






No Benefits to a Delay

Although no ICD-10 delay was included in the recently-enacted Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) reform legislation, some physicians continue to suggest there should be another delay. These words of Mark Twain seem like an apt description of the ICD-10 transition: “Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”