The 2012 American College of Cardiology (ACC) scientific session in late March in Chicago will feature a new Practice Performance, Improvement & Administration pathway that will help practice managers navigate those challenges better than ever before.

Technology doesn't hold a monopoly on innovation. Innovation can arise in the form of new processes or even in new ways of thinking.

As more cardiovascular practices integrate with hospitals to save on overhead, data management challenges exacerbate the arduous process. Many have to overcome several hurdles to create an almost seamless system.

Clinical registries allow for benchmarking of one provider to another, linking measurement to performance improvement and leading to the betterment of overall quality of care. However, the cost of participation to individual providers may be a drawback.

Physicians with an ownership stake in their practices were more likely than other physicians to think of EHR implementation as difficult or very difficult, according to the results of pre- and post-implementation surveys of physicians published Jan. 16 in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) is launching a range of online courses to help health IT professionals prepare for the ICD-10 implementation deadline of Oct. 1, 2013, and the association's Training Pathways Guide is available to help health IT professionals choose the appropriate courses to take.

Heathcare IT continues to offer opportunities to improve patient care while adding efficiencies to the healthcare system. But several analyses show that obtaining those potential benefits remains a challenge.

As health IT use and efforts to lower costs remain on the healthcare community's collective consciousness, the American College of Physicians (ACP), updated its Ethics Manual to reflect changes among areas of concern including confidentiality, the use of social media, stewardship of resources, pay-for-performance reimbursement programs and patient-centered medical homes.