Healthcare quality is improving, but access is still uneven and disparities exist, especially for minority and low-income groups, according to the 2010 National Healthcare Quality Report and National Healthcare Disparities Report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

Nuance Communications highlighted Nuance Healthcare Development Platform, a cloud-based platform, at HIMSS11 and emphasized its partnership with 3M.

ORLANDO, Fla.--Facility-wide physician education, along with the implementation of a computerized provider order entry (CPOE) system, can result in improved standardization and a reduction of blood transfusions, said medical oncologist C. Eric Hartz, MD, CMIO at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. Hartz described the project and its results at his facility during a Feb. 21 presentation at HIMSS11.

ORLANDO, FLA. -- Much to my amazement, standards and interoperability [for health IT] have occurred, said Christopher G. Chute, MD, DrPH, of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., during an educational session Feb. 20 at the Physicians IT Symposium at HIMSS.

U.S. healthcare employment accounted for 10.7 percent of total employment in January, an increase of more than one percentage point since 2007, according to a recent report from Altarum Institute.

In a survey to assess hospitals' adoption of health IT and meeting meaningful use, 27 percent of 442 hospitals are expecting to achieve all 14 core meaningful use measures by May 2012, according to John P. Hoyt, executive vice president of organizational services at the Health Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS) during a webinar this week concerning public policies and health IT adoption.

SAS and GE Healthcare have entered into a joint development and marketing agreement that enables GE Healthcare to apply SAS technology to analyze patient safety information to help hospitals prevent adverse medical events.

Elsevier/MEDai, a provider of clinical analytics systems, has launched the latest version of Pinpoint Review, its real-time clinical surveillance system for hospitals. The new version will feature an expanded set of clinical watch triggers, expanded core measure alerts and three new predictions: ICU Admission Prediction, Length of Stay Prediction and Mortality Prediction.