Joseph Conn

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AMA-led Group Asks Feds to Redo EHR Testing Program

Joseph Conn | Modern Healthcare | January 23, 2015

The American Medical Association is calling for an overhaul of a federal program to test and certify electronic health-record systems for suitability in the EHR incentive-payment program. Its request has been joined by 34 other medical specialty societies and healthcare professional organizations. Read More »

Banner Health Cyberattack Impacts 3.7 Million People

Joseph Conn | Modern Healthcare | August 3, 2016

Banner Health is contacting 3.7 million individuals whose personal information may have been accessed in a cyberattack that began on systems that process credit card payments for food and beverage purchases at Banner locations. The breach then expanded to include patient and health plan information. The Phoenix-based health system, with locations in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada and Wyoming, first learned of the attack on July 7, according to a company statement...

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Good Health IT vs. Bad Health IT

Joseph Conn | Modern Healthcare | January 26, 2013

The title of Dr. Scot Silverstein's teaching website at Drexel University, “Contemporary Issues in Medical Informatics: Good Health IT, Bad Health IT, and Common Examples of Healthcare IT Difficulties,” summarizes the veteran physician informaticist's general outlook on the current state of affairs in health information technology. It tells you nothing, however, of the passion with which Silverstein speaks or writes about the subject. Read More »

It’s About Time: Open APIs Finally Burst Onto Healthcare’s Sluggish Scene

Sue Montgomery | Nuviun | June 9, 2014

In the midst of the struggles that we face with interoperability, efforts that support open API use may well hold the keys to the HIT Kingdom...

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New York health network loses another IT official following probe into EHR implementation

Joseph Conn | Modern Healthcare | August 19, 2015

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corp. has lost its second health IT leader amid an investigation into a multiyear, multimillion dollar installation of an electronic health-record system. In 2013, Epic Systems Corp. of Verona, Wis., won a 15-year, $302 million contract to replace HHC's decades-old EHR system. With 11 hospitals, HHC is the largest municipal health network in the nation. The total cost of the health information technology upgrade is estimated at $1.4 billion.

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The VA Waitlist Fiasco: VistA Should Not be Thrown Out With the Bathwater

Without a doubt, the death of American veterans as a result of the VA waitlist debacle is tragic and unacceptable. The Obama administration must move quickly and deliberately to fix the underlying problems and restore faith in the agency. If these issues were common throughout the VA network of hospitals and clinics, it might make sense to consider dramatic, earth-shaking alternatives like moving veterans to private providers and shuttering the VA. But they are not common. Indeed, as Washington Monthly reporter Phillip Longman has documented, the VA’s challenges are regional, not pervasive. Read More »

U.S., U.K. to collaborate on health IT, data projects

Joe Conn | Modern Healthcare | January 24, 2014

HHS and health authorities in the United Kingdom agreed to collaborate on a broad scope of health information technology and health data projects and practices. Read More »

Veterans Health Administration Thinks Key to Interoperability May Be in the Cloud

Joseph Conn | Modern Healthcare | January 9, 2017

The giant Veterans Health Administration is poking its head into the cloud to see if therein lies the key to sharing data within and outside of its sprawling healthcare delivery system. The goal of the Digital Health Platform is to pull patient data from the VA, military and commercial electronic health record systems, applications, devices and wearables and send it to a patient's healthcare team in real-time. That would allow patients to more easily obtain health care from physicians and hospitals outside of VA facilities, but some experts say a cloud-based platform also leaves it vulnerable to hackers...

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VistA's open-source extension into West Virginia

Joseph Conn | Modern Healthcare | April 29, 2013

David Elyard, a health IT coordinator in West Virginia's bureau of behavior health and health facilities, drove the winding roads of his mountainous state last week to trouble-shoot the launch of the computerized laboratory information module being added onto the predominately open-source VistA electronic health-record system... Read More »