As an organization in the healthcare industry, you already know you’re at a higher target for threats because of the information you store and transmit. Most hospitals do their due diligence to set up security standards to protect patient information from outside threats, but then often underestimate the exponential risk of threats that can happen within the organization.

Even as states begin to lift some of the COVID-19 restrictions and businesses begin to reopen, healthcare organizations still face many of the same challenges presented at the beginning of this pandemic.

Nationwide we are experiencing a new and alarming health concern, the significant rise in reports of severe lung disease which could be potentially linked to vaping and e-cigarettes.

Your facility may be gearing up to integrate Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) into your existing physician order workflow, which is the program established to increase the rate of appropriate advanced diagnostic imaging services provided to Medicare beneficiaries. The mandate from CMS is that the program needs to be fully implemented by January 2021.

It's quite common for patients to move throughout their community seeing numerous physicians as part of their treatment plan. Connecting these provider practices with the hospital HIS system for seamless data exchange can prove to be challenging. 

When discussing Meaningful Use with CIOs, I’ve received some comments that they pursued specific measures to meet the requirement, but they believe they’re not taking full advantage of the measure in their real-world, day-to-day workflow. 

It's always fun to take a quick look back at the prior year and see what was accomplished, but my favorite thing is looking ahead to the future, and prioritizing what we can do to help organizations meet their 2018 goals.

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"After years of frustrations, user wish-list turns positive." The headline from this year's EHR Satisfaction Survey suggests improvements in attitude and satisfaction toward hospital EHRs, yet the underlying challenges for CIOs and clinicians still haven't changed very much.

Interoperability remains a top challenge for hospitals — so much so that it was cited in the HealthcareIT News 2016 EHR Satisfaction Survey as a top issue. The lack of interoperability causes hospitals to be inefficient and causes duplicate work for clinicians. It may be time to start looking outside of the EHR to make interoperability between systems happen.