While most practices appear to be relieved that meaningful use incentives have raised the bar for oncology information systems vendors and brought both enterprise EMR and niche health IT vendors into the market, most are not fully satisfied with the current offerings, according to a report from healthcare market researcher KLAS.

The 2010 elections transformed U.S. politics, according to a perspective paper published Aug. 31 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Health IT company Axolotl health information exchange (HIE) has become part of the OptumInsight portfolio of healthcare management systems and services, part of Optum, the current corporate owner of Axolotl.

In research published in a special article in the New England Journal of Medicine, EHR sites were associated with higher levels of achievement and improvement in regionally vetted standards for diabetes care and outcomes.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is reminding health insurers seeking to increase their rates by 10 percent or more that they must submit their request to state or federal reviewers to determine whether they are reasonable or not. This rate review program, created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, will help to bring greater transparency and accountability for families and small business owners.

The integration of an interventional radiology (IR) quality assurance (QA) reporting system into the workflow process and making completion mandatory has the potential to minimize the work required for data entry and to improve participation in the QA process compared to data entry requirements for stand-alone software programs, according to research in the August edition of the Journal of Digital Imaging.

A well-coordinated effort has protected patients across Tennessee from untold pain and suffering over three recent yearsand saved 122 hospitals in that state an estimated $11 million, collectively, in avoided hospital infections and surgical complications.

IBM has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire i2, a provider of intelligence analytics for crime and fraud prevention, to accelerate its business analytics initiatives and help clients in the public and private sectors address crime, fraud and security threats. Financial terms were not disclosed.