February 21, 2012
Cerner has been automating one-fifth of the U.S. economy … health care … for the past 33 years and during the first two decades we focused on how to get the information off of the paper and into the system. Over the last decade, as more of the information was digital, a shift began to occur that moved the focus towards how this information would impact the workflow if more and more information was already available. The need to filter the information contextually to the provider/patient relationship began to surface, and the workflows have started to adapt.
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February 20, 2012
It’s no secret that the U.S. isn’t as healthy as it could, or really should, be. And, as our health care system is set up as a “react and respond” system, the unhealthier the population becomes, the more expensive health care becomes. As health care costs continue to rise, it becomes increasingly difficult to improve health outcomes. I think you’ll agree that this is a pretty vicious circle.
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February 17, 2012
Cerner has been on a health journey with our associates for the past several years. We remain committed to bringing innovative, progressive programming to our associates. Our goal is to make activities engaging, easily accessible and fun.
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February 16, 2012
As the CFO of Winona Health, a community-owned, nonprofit organization responsible for meeting the region’s health care needs of Winona, Minn., one of my goals is to ensure we’re positioned to receive every dollar of funding available to us. Of course this means I’m keenly focused on meeting the government’s Meaningful Use requirements.
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February 14, 2012
As the electronic health record becomes standard for patient care organizations, providers must decide on a strategy to not only utilize these powerful tools, but to fully embrace the advantages they bring to health care.
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February 09, 2012
As a family physician in a small rural community, I’m not in the thick of the debates over health information technology. But I know something that policy-makers in Washington need to know – and consumers across the country, as well.My patients love their electronic health records (EHRs)! They totally understand how EHRs are improving their care, making it safer and more effective. A year ago, they wouldn’t have known to ask if we were using an EHR system. But since our practice implemented them, they see the difference – and they want more.
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February 07, 2012
Truman Medical Centers operates one of Kansas City’s largest” quality safety net” hospitals, where we provide care for a high number of lower-income patients, as well as those without insurance. This care often goes uncompensated. In fact, we provided more than $108 million in uncompensated care over the course of the fiscal year in 2010. That’s a big number, and is one reason why we’re constantly looking for ways to improve the quality and efficiency of the care we provide to our patients.
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February 02, 2012
As many of you now know, Florida Hospital Flagler will be recognized by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) as one of 66 hospitals (out of more than 5,000) qualifying as Stage 7 on the HIMSS Analytics EMR adoption scale at HIMSS12. The dedication and hard work of the Adventist Health System (AHS) Information Services teams and the strong IT vision put forth by David Ottati, CEO, and his leadership team at Florida Hospital Flagler made this achievement possible.
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January 31, 2012
In the paper world, the physician has to transcribe information from various places in the chart into a summary note. This transcription is done so other care providers can read key information without having to page through the chart. Examples of this kind of documentation are the immediate post-operative note and the discharge summary. With the advent of the EHR, paper documentation tasks have often been directly translated into electronic versions. This process does not take full advantage of the system’s ability to gather information from the electronic medical record and include it in a pre-completed note without end user intervention.
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January 26, 2012
We’re only about a month into 2012 and there’s no doubt this is going to be a busy year from a regulatory perspective. Our Cerner family will continue to make great progress toward attesting to Meaningful Use. The first performance period for the hospital value-based purchasing program will conclude, and the pay-for-performance era will formally begin here in the United States. Hospitals will become financially accountable to 30-day readmissions. A handful of you will be well on your accountable care organization journey. While these initiatives all have a direct impact on health care organizations, we cannot overlook another initiative likely to have the broadest impact on health IT since Y2K.
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January 24, 2012
In November, I had the pleasure of listening to presentations from high school students participating in Cerner Scholars, a program designed for students to work at Cerner for part of their school day to receive academic credit. Their assignment for this particular evening was to present to their parents and to a select group of Cerner associates what they had been working on all semester.
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January 18, 2012
With the first year of Meaningful Use participation behind us, HHS has begun sharing program statistics. In fact CMS has been providing general program updates to the Health IT Policy Committee for a few months now. HHS recently released, for the first time, a Meaningful Use attestation data set. This data provides the ability to see how many eligible hospitals and eligible providers (EPs) have attested through November 2011. Further stratification can be done by vendor, state, specialty, etc. This report also distinguishes whether the certified EHR used for attestation received complete or modular certification. It’s important to consider these terms when using the HHS data to gain perspective on the HIT industry.
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