The Readmore 2014

Yesterday the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued an Open Letter to Health Care Providers making several changes to the Self-Dislcosure Protocol relating to the physician self referral law or Stark Law.The OIG indicates in the letter that they are no longer going to accept under the self disclosure protocol pure Stark related liability issues....

Various news sources report today that David Blumenthal, MD, former Harvard Medical School professor, has been selected by the Obama administration to lead the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). HHS press release provides additional detail on Dr. Blumenthal.Thanks to John Halamka for the tip who writes about...

Congratulations to my partner, Tom Flaherty, who was selected as Best Lawyers' 2009 West Virginia Litigator of the Year. A well deserved honor.Tom is a straightforward and hardworking defense litigator who does an incredible job representing the best interests of his clients.This...

John Halamka at Life as a Healthcare CIO provides a good overview of the timeline and deadlines for the health information technology portions under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).UPDATE (3/17/09): John Halamka has also added a summary of Timeline for...

Ed Bennett at Found In Cache does a wonderful job of giving us a statistical glimpse of the increasing (skyrocketing) use of social media tools (YouTube, Facebook and Twitter) by hospitals across the country.His post, "Hospital Socia Media Stats," gives some interesting statistics...

The March/April 2009 Issue of Health Affairs concentrates on the topic of Stimulating Health Information Technology. Although I am not a subscriber to Health Affairs the issue looks to have some great articles on health information technology and the current changes in the field.Included...

Today's Charleston Gazette features an article by Eric Eyre on a health information technology company located in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. EvriChart relocated to West Virginia four years ago and focuses its business on managing health information for hospitals, physicians and other health care providers. John King, COO of the company...

The Thursday, March 13 Federal Register (74 Fed Reg 10743) contained a notice for submitting nominees to the new committees created under ARRA-HITECH (stimulus bill) for developing health information technology standards and policy. The two commitees will be called the HIT Standards Commitee and HIT Policy Commitee. Details on these committees and...

The West Virginia Health Care Authority's 2008 Annual Report for FY 2007 is now available. The report summary was provided to the West Virginia Legislature by Sonia Chambers, Chair of the WVHCA. The report contains significant information about the state of health care in West Virginia.The Executive Summary states:Hospitals:Overall, West Virginia...

HealthcareIT News reports that Indiana University teams up with NoMoreClipboard.com to provide online personal health records (PHRs) to students at its Bloomington campus.More on launch of the new online PHR can be found on Indiana University's press release, including a link to the free PHR called "myHEALTH" on the Health Center's Web sit...