The following is an excerpt from EHR Intelligence. It was written by Vera Gruessner. There are a variety of issues healthcare professionals, providers, and payers are concerned about regarding the ICD-10 transition deadline. Last week, we discussed and dispelled some common myths that stakeholders have about the ICD-10 transition deadline. This week we will go over an additional five facts that address some typical questions and concerns about ICD-10 implementation.

The follow excerpt is from an article on iHealthBeat. The increased adoption of electronic health records and other health IT has improved patient safety, according to an issue brief by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, Health IT Analytics reports. The issue brief -- which is the first of four that ONC plans to publish by September 2015 -- examined four systematic literature reviews and various studies that show how health IT has influenced factors that affect patient safety.

Have you recently installed radiological information system software at your radiology practice? Or, are you preparing to implement a RIS application solution any time soon? Many radiology practices take to using RIS software because they realize the many benefits it confers, from scheduling patients to gaining easy access to scans and test results. But RIS software can be even more useful when you use it to make connections with other medical professionals. Here is why connecting your RIS software with your referring physician’s electronic health record software is a smart idea.

You can walk into several medical practices at random and after spending some time in each one, you’ll usually be able to tell the ones that are merely good and which ones are actually great. Of course, hiring the most talented people for your staff and creating a great work environment are crucial for developing an excellent practice. Moreover, a major aspect of developing a great work environment involves giving your team the proper tools they need to get the job done. A clear example of this is electronic health record software.

Just as you cannot expect to use a standard home tool box with its hammer, wrench, and screwdriver to repair something tiny such as a watch or a pair of eyeglasses, you wouldn’t expect to get the best results with generic billing software in your medical practice. It’s crucial to use the right tool for the job, which is why so many medical practices look for a dedicated medical billing software solution. If you are early in your medical career and have limited experience with medical applications, or if your medical organization has been relying on old-fashioned software for a while now, you’ll want to get an overview of how the latest medical billing software will improve things in your office.

Anyone who owns or runs an internal medicine practice knows the importance of using the latest proven technology, since it gives you advantages in how the team diagnoses and treats patients. It’s also prudent to keep up with developments in office software and technology, in order to improve the patient experience, as well as make life easier for the staff. With that in mind, here are three reasons to consider implementing internal medicine EMR software at your facility. You’ll see that using the software will help members of your team save money and work more efficiently, add information to patient charts more quickly, and generate customized reports with little effort.

When your medical organization researched and then purchased a radiological information system solution to implement at your facility, you may have done so with the idea that you would be helping your staff work more efficiently and take better care of patients. It may not have been immediately obvious that you can use such software solutions to connect with another medical practice. Now that more practices and other healthcare providers are going online and using software solutions that involve communicating over safe and secure networks, owners and managers of radiological practices are coming to see that it is beneficial to connect their RIS software with the referring physician’s EHR software.

No one wants to be considered an anti-technology Luddite or to be accused of being out of touch with modern ways. People sometimes resist the latest amenities, such as hanging onto flip phones with physical keyboards instead of adopting the newer mobile devices that have touch-sensitive displays, but they are really missing out on advances. It’s hard to imagine an industry that is more based on advancements in technology than healthcare. Robot-assisted surgeries, software that helps medical professionals make diagnoses and faster networks with robust security protocols in place, have helped us make significant improvements in patient care.

Back in 2009, President Obama signed the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act. It gave the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services authority to create programs designed to improve the level of safety, efficiency, and quality of the health care delivered in this country by focusing on developments in health information technology. To that end, the government is making an effort to promote and encourage medical practices to start using such important tools as electronic health record software and electronic health information networks.

The following excerpt is from an article found on MedScape. It was written by Betsy Nicoletti. The US healthcare community is moving to ICD-10 in October 2015. There will be 70,000 choices of diagnosis codes alone, instead of a mere 16,000 choices currently available to describe a condition, illness, injury, or symptom. Coders are delighted. Physicians, not so much. But despite the notice and preparation, there are things that could go amiss.