electronic health records

Medicare officials said this morning that the government will offer free electronic health records to physicians participating in the Medicare program. Doctors will be provided with free software based on the highly-regarded Vista, the system developed in-house by doctors and engineers at the Veteran's Affairs administration. The news is likely to shake up the health IT sector considerably, where many vendors have made bets on the small to midsize practice market. Medicare officials said …

TEPR, the biggest conference about nation's (painstakingly slow) progress towards electronic health records, opened in Salt Lake City on Monday and goes through Thursday. There are tracks on more aspects of EMRs than you can think of and more vendors of EMRs in the exhibit hall than there are doctors in the US using them (well, not quite). One keynote was from David Sundwall, the Utah director of health, whose state has the most advanced health network and possibly the greatest use of …

They were once bitter enemies.  But Hillary Clinton and Newt Gingrich are now allies, at least as far as the need to move to national system of electronic health records is concerned.  The unlikely pair held a news conference in Washington yesterday to announce their support for more federal support of IT investment in the health care field. Gingrich, who heads the Center for Health Care Transformation, a pro-technology group in Washington, has long been an advocate of …