Christina's Considerations

HIMSS So Cal Healthcare IT Conference

Just as I'm getting ready to experience the big HIMSS Conference, the Southern California Chapter has released its agenda for their upcoming Healthcare IT Conference in Los Angeles. The conference is a great opportunity to hear from National and California... Read more →

HIE for Consumers

Will from Redwood MedNet sent me a powerful video from Health Information Partnership for Tennessee. The video will help consumers learn and understand more about why health information exchange is important. In the video, I was pleased to see an... Read more →

HIE Guide for CIOs

CHIME and eHealth Initiative have joined forces to create a Health Information Exchange (HIE) Guide for CIOs. The guide looks to be fairly comprehensive, starting with the background of HIE and continuing to key contract elements with a Health Information... Read more →

Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast

I participated in this morning's Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast. Gartner, the technology research giant, brought together some wonderful speakers who shared information that I feel is important to healthcare -- especially at this moment in time. The issues will... Read more →

Top 11 Trends for 2012 in Healthcare Data

A look ahead at healthcare data points to increased risks, regulatory expectations and reputational fallout. So it was a pleasure that I could contribute to a list of the top 10 trends for 2012 in healthcare data. And, I really... Read more →

Telehealth, the Cloud and BI — oh my!

My guest blog post for Health IT Exchange made it onto their list of top 7 community blogs of 2011. Telehealth, the cloud and BI — oh my! includes my post on the importance of connecting health IT with disaster... Read more →

Healthcare Data Breaches are Up 32%

Ponemon Institute has released their study findings on hospitals and patient privacy and the results seem to confirm my fears from a few months ago when I looked at the cost data breaches. The wake-up call comes straight from the... Read more →

How To: Set up Office 365 with Direct Project

Sean at the Family Health Guy has a great post on setting up Office 365 with ONC's Direct Project. I believe this will take us far and it is a wonderful opportunity for small, independent and/or rural providers to particiapte... Read more →

HHS Updating Regulations to Recognize Changing Technology

HHS has released its plan for retrospective review of existing rules that may actually be interfering with the delivery of healthcare services. This review is in response to Executive Order 13563, which is aimed at all federal agencies and the... Read more →

Health Information Technology Online Seminar

I've been quite impressed by the American College of Healthcare Executives interest in health information technology over the last few years and their desire to spark the imagination of healthcare leaders. It was especially exciting to see us evolve to... Read more →

HIMSS HIE Toolkit

The HIMSS HIE Workgroup is getting started on developing some new tools for the HIMSS HIE Toolkit and I thought I should remind my readers about this resource. Last year a technical architecture checklist and master provider index tools were... Read more →

Three Steps Towards Adopting EHRs

I'm a featured blogger of Healthworks Collective and they recently invited me to write a guest post putting EHRs into perspective for their readers. The article defines the landscape, addresses a couple of real challenges related to privacy and security... Read more →

Top Social Media Voice for the HIT Industry

For the last couple of days I've been getting a lot of new Twitter followers and their profiles seem to demonstrate a common interest in EHRs and HIE. So I've been wondering... where are they learning about me? Well, I... Read more →

Lunch & Learns featuring the HIT Workforce Curriculum

DocNotes posted on his first impression of the HIT Workforce Curriculum and I realized I had covered this in my HIT course for ACHE, but not posted on it here. The ONC has released its HIT Workforce Curriculum, which is... Read more →

Book Sale: Social Media in Healthcare

I'm cleaning out my office today and organizing. I just pulled 40 copies of my book Social Media in Healthcare: Connect Communicate Collaborate out of the box and put them on a shelf. It got me thinking that I should... Read more →

Connecting California to Improve Patient Care

I finally made it to Redwood MedNet Health Information Exchange Conference and share my learnings and thoughts below. I first learned about their activities when still working for the Santa Barbara County Care Data Exchange back in 2005. It is... Read more →

Healthcare Unbound and Redwood MedNet

I'm attending two conferences next week. The first is to speak on social media and join a panel at Healthcare Unbound in San Diego. I'm really looking forward to it, because the audience will be non-traditional for me and I'm... Read more →

New eHealth Initiative HIE Toolkit

eHI has released its new HIE toolkit. I'd recommend reviewing the tools if you are establishing health information exchange within your system or across providers in the region. Also, I also still recommend the HIMSS Guide to Establishing a RHIO.... Read more →

HIT Exchange: The Cost of Healthcare Data Breaches

My latest article was in a bit of a new direction for me. I put my risk manager hat back on and explore data breaches from the perspective of an administrator who needs to balance several influences. HIT Exchange: The... Read more →

ONC's Direct Project

The ONC's Direct Project comes down to nationwide accessibility and a simple way to connect each little practice's EHR with other EHRs, registeries and software. It will/could facilitate: HIEs connecting with individual practices practices connecting with practices practices connecting with... Read more →

What do ACO-Minded Providers Want?

Physician Practice interviewed me about what hospitals with an eye on accountable care organizations want. I believe it is all about partnerships and the priorities of hospitals, physicians, long-term care, home care and other community-based providers will include: identifying partners... Read more →

Hospital Preparedness Program

The Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP) includes participation from about 85% of the nation's hospitals; and approximately 76% met 90% or more of the program measures for all-hazards preparedness. I've been participating in this program for over two years and really... Read more →

What is Meaningful Use?

IT types can be some really creative people. In this post, I'd like to share Dr. Ross Martin's latest Rap on Meaningful Use. If your asking "What is Meaningful Use?" this is a fun way to learn. Read more →

Finding Solutions to Healthcare Challenges with Telehealth Technologies

The following is a commentary I was invited to submit for the ATA Daily News. In 2008, while working in a small rural hospital, I watched as some of our patients had to be transferred to a larger facility in... Read more →

Consent Best Practices for HIEs

Exchanging health information requires individuals to grant permission for their records to move from one provider to another. The process of, and requirements for, obtaining individual consent for sharing information places more or less control of information use and disclosure... Read more →