Practice Technology

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services earlier this month granted a two-year deadline extension to 2013 for the transition from ICD-9 codes to the greatly expanded ICD-10 codes.

Almost 40 percent of office-based physicians are at least dipping their toes in the electronic health record waters, according to a government survey.

The idea behind check-in kiosks is not only to increase the accuracy of patient records, but also to improve patient and staff satisfaction by decreasing tedious administrative tasks.

Greenway Medical Systems earned two first-place awards for its electronic health records system for smaller practices from an independent health-care vendor research firm.

Hawaii's largest health insurer is the first commercial health insurer in the U.S. to offer American Well's online medical visit service to its members.

Have you recently visited with a patient suffering from "cyberchondria"?

Speech recognition has come to the iPhone.

Could adding an electronic health records system to your practice cut your malpractice insurance costs?

Almost half of physicians report consulting a web-based reference tool during a patient visit, mostly to check drug dosing, interaction, and side effect information.

A billing dispute between a chiropractor and his patient escalated into a lawsuit early this year with the chiropractor accusing the patient of defamation for comments posted about the solo practitioner on an online ratings site.

If the federal government has its way, a quality reporting initiative from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services could pave the way toward establishing a pay-for-performance system.

If 80 percent of the population maintained a personal health record, it would save the U.S. $21 billion a year on health-care costs, according to a recently released study.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced in late October that it will award an incentive payment of 2 percent of a physician's total Medicare allowed charges to doctors who use e-prescribing systems next year.

There are two functions being integrated into EHRs that will radically change how medical care is delivered: clinical decision support and a communication portal.

While electronic health records systems are expected to become more widespread in the future, the pace of adoption will remain slow in the coming years, according to a survey from a top industry group.

It's not health insurance bureaucracy, an aging population or malpractice liability, but rather rampant spending on ineffective and unproven technology that is the top driver of the increased cost of health care in the United States, according to a recent study.

A majority of Americans believe it's important for all of their health information to be stored electronically, but have "serious" concerns about the confidentiality of those records, according to a recent survey.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' planned transition to a new set of health-care diagnosis and procedure codes could lead to big cost increases to physician practices of all sizes, according to a recently released report.

The CCHIT wants to launch a certification program for PHRs, such as Google Health and applications under Microsoft's Health Vault platform, by mid-2009.

Planning any holiday-season electronic health record systems shopping? A key standards-setting health information technology nonprofit has some recommendations about where you may want to start.

Two major health insurers and two technology companies have partnered to offer an electronic prescribing service to Florida physicians for free.

The Medical Group Management Association criticized a Medicare quality reporting initiative, complaining that the program doesn't provide guidance on how to improve patient outcomes and creates an administrative burden on practices.

Both major-party candidates for president have voiced general support for health informatics to help achieve return on investment, reduce medical errors, and improve efficiencies and service quality.

Health-care IT seems to be the new issue du jour for Congress. On Sept. 15, Rep. Pete Stark (D-California), the namesake of the anti-kickback medical referral law, unveiled a bill to establish a nationwide health-care IT infrastructure, but the measure faces competition from two other similar bills already under consideration.