News 11/8/11

North Shore Medical Labs will donate Nortec EHR to approximately 100 providers in medically underserved communities and small practices in Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina as part of AHIMA’s and HHS’s initiative to foster EHR adoption in underserved areas. AHIMA will offer providers six hours of Web-based training.

Massachusetts lawmakers consider legislation that would authorize the operation of casinos, while earmarking 23% of license fees to promote EHR adoption. Should the law pass, the state could raise about $50 million to advance the use of EHR statewide.

Rosemarie Nelson of MGMA’s Health Care Consulting Group offers some practical and very hands-on recommendations for practices adopting EHRs.  In addition to some great suggestions on setup and training , she also throws in these logical reminders:

• One size does not fit all
• Everyone is at a different stage with different “wants”
• The key to optimization is personalization — get out into the patient care area and find the trick that works for each individual.

athenahealth wins the #29 spot for Top Places to Work in Boston for medium-sized employers.

Covisint reminds physician practices that Meaningful Use and PQRS incentives can be obtained in the same year and that the PQRS submission process takes only a few hours. Last year 6,800 providers earned over $9 million in bonuses participating in PQRS through Covisint’s Docsite registry.

In October, physician offices added 8,000 of the 12,000 new jobs created in healthcare.

The Practice Fusion folks tell me they earned the top ranking for e-prescribing and keeping users on track to achieve Meaningful Use in Brown-Wilson’s Black Book Rankings. A total of 224 EMRs were included in the study.

E-mail Inga.