Nevada, Arizona, Indiana, North Dakota and Mississippi have joined the 13 attorneys general (AG) who are party to the suit challenging the healthcare reform law, filed by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum. Two of the state governors, Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, have sidestepped their AGs to partake in the lawsuit.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has signed into law a bill that will expand telemedicine coverage in the state by ensuring that health insurers cover and reimburse for healthcare services provided through telemedicine.

Nearly a third of providers planning an EMR purchase are replacing an existing program, according to a new report from healthcare research firm KLAS. When it comes to choosing an EMR, physician practices are considering an ever-increasing number of software vendors, KLAS found.

Proponents of government support for expanding health IT point to tremendous benefits for the U.S. healthcare system. However, although many experts discuss the hoped-for benefits of health IT, formal evaluation and evidence regarding successful implementation is lacking, according a report from the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Now that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) is one year old, its time to ask if the federal government has gotten IT right, according to an editorial in the April issue of HealthAffairs.

One potential benefit of the rapidly accumulating databases of healthcare information is the ability to make unprecedented links between genomic data and clinical medicine, according to a study published by Cell Press in the April issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics.

American Career College will offer an associate of occupational science degree in health IT at its Anaheim, Calif., campus beginning in May. The degree is designed to prepare students to play a role in maintaining, collecting and analyzing the data for doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers.

Family medicine needs influential, aggressive allies, according to a commentary by Mary Nolan Hall, MD, and Jerry Kruse, MD, along with the Association of Departments of Family Medicine, that was published in the January/February edition of Annals of Family Medicine.