Health IT Stimulus Summit, Dell Acquires Perot Systems, National Health IT Week

Our Week in Review posts are now “The Recovery Room” posts. Our idea and hope is to do at least a Waiting Room (upcoming events of interest) or Recovery Room (recent events of interest) post each week. If there is an event you think our readers would be interested in, just let us know.

September 17, in Boston at the Health Data Management’s Health IT Stimulus Summit, Speaker Dr. David Hunt, Chief Medical Officer for ONCHIT says to expect the 2011 criteria for meaningful use to be basic. Given the short time period to begin the program they must focus on goals that hospitals and physicians can meet. “The big thing for 2011 is that you actually acquire this equipment and start using it.” Hunt says. But expect future criteria to get tougher. He went on to define three major periods of phasing in meaningful use. The 2011 period is one of “structure”, 2013 the period of “process”, and finally 2015 will be “outcomes”.

Dell makes a splash and gets into the health care arena. For almost $4B, Dell will acquire Perot Systems. The two Texas based companies’ boards approved the acquisition on Sept. 20th. Read the full story. Dell’s competitor HP and previously Texas based Compaq bought EDS (Ross Perot’s original company) about a year ago. This week HP announced the re-branding and naming of EDS to HP Enterprise Services.

Last week was National Health IT Week. In it’s fourth year, the event takes place in Washington DC and represents itself to be a collaborative forum on a neutral platform to promote Health IT awareness. HIT advocates on the Hill pledged to keep up their push for health IT measures in health care reform and other pending legislation even after the substantial funding for HIT in the ARRA. Here is my pick on an interesting take on the event. Read Neil Versel’s Health IT Week shrinks, but Congress needs all the reminders it can get.

And the winners are… HIMSS announced this years Davies Award for Health IT Adoption recipients during National Health IT Week. The recipients will be honored at the 2010 HIMSS Conference in March.

HIPAA interim Security Breach Notification rules went into effect and all CEs and BAs must be compliant as of September 23rd. To learn more about this visit our HIPAA page.

The HIT Standards and Policy committees gathered for their monthly meetings. Read our full summary in a previous post.

Have a good week!