Last week as they say in Vegas, my show was dark. My long awaited move from Houston to Atlanta was realized and I am now reporting to you from “Hotlanta”. And they can not be referring to the weather when they say that. After 30 years in Houston I don’t own the winter clothes I have needed since I arrived. And the last time I was in the city was for the HIMSS conference back on March 2nd and it snowed. Where’s the hot?
On the HIT front, HHS announced more grants to states for design and implementation of IT infrastructure of Health Insurance Exchanges. The “funding will be directed to States that are willing and able to lead the race to develop IT systems. These systems can then be used as models by all States in their efforts to establish Exchanges.” Read their announcement.
The ONC’s three day December Roundtable on Personal Health Records (PHR) has no more room for actual attendance but you can still attend via web cast. They are currently soliciting comments on issues related to PHRs. The event will address the current state and evolving nature of PHRs.
And on the other coast, the mHealth Initiative 2nd International mHealth Conference was held in San Diego. Pricewaterhouse Cooper revealed its survey findings that say 3 in 10 Americans would use their cell phones to track and monitor their personal health information (PHI) and 40% would be willing to pay for remote devices that would send their PHI to a provider. View their full report, Healthcare Unwired.
FierceHealthcare named “10 Healthcare Bloggers We’re Thankful For” and our Mary Pat Whaley showed up on the list. They think her blog is fierce and we couldn’t agree more. Check out Mary Pat’s eBook on front end collections.
And speaking of our experts, Bill Hersh was named by Modern Healthcare magazine as one of the Top 25 Clinical Informaticists in the US. You can also find him on HealthTechTopia’s Top 10 Most Influential Informatics Professors. We would put him on all our top lists!
The elections last week are stirring a lot of talk about repealing health insurance reform and Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Some might think the HITECH Act is included in all of this but in fact it is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). We are not likely to see any changes when it comes to EHR adoption initiatives.
Finally, yesterday was the 115th Anniversary of the discovery of x-rays. One can not imagine health care without x-rays today. Will they be saying that about EHRs 100 years from now? I would imagine so.
Have a good week.