HealthGrades has released its 2011 50 Best Hospitals report, and only 19 states had hospitals that made the cut.

Based on impending reimbursement cuts, proposed bundled payments and enhanced quality expectations emerging from the federal government, providers that have been fearing these changes, but not moving to alter their internal processes, would be wise to heed the words of Allan Quatermain in H. Rider Haggards novel. At this weeks annual conference of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) in Orlando, Fla., representatives from a slew of government agencies, including CMS, HHS, ONC, NIST, spoke to the necessity of providers starting to prepare for a change in the U.S. healthcare system, and healthcare practitioners provided examples and guidance for improvement.

Practices are finding innovative approaches to boost their referral base, including the use of sophisticated modules within their EMR, while others are using conventional approaches like consultants and event hosting. But there are many other untapped ways that practices can employ to generate new revenue.

ORLANDO, Fla.--Questions about political and cultural challenges as well as optimal governance dominated the HIMSS roundtable discussion Practical Pearls for Improving Outcomes with Clinical Decision Support (CDS), held Feb. 22 at the annual meeting of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).

ORLANDO, Fla.--The message of the HIMSS11 Physician IT Symposium panel discussion about meaningful use requirements was that EHR adoption is worthwhile--eventually. And when it comes to measuring quality, "trying to do this is a lot harder than it seems," said Dean F. Sittig, PhD, of the University of Texas Memorial Hermanns Center for Healthcare Quality and Safety in Houston. The only way to improve quality is to measure it, but its really hard to measure quality, he said.

You dont want to be a doctor. You want to marry a doctor. These words spoken by my mother were fighting words. I knew at age 10 that I wanted to be a doctor. Although discouraged by family and societal norms for women, my love for science and the desire to help people propelled me to my current professiona seasoned cardiovascular professional with nearly 30 years under my belt.

Emphasizing both deficit reduction and investment, President Barack Obama has sent his 2012 budget to Congress, which includes a two-year extension of steady Medicare reimbursements and $32 billion in funding to the National Institutes of Healthpaid for, in part, by $62 billion worth of Medicare savings.

Combining automatic referrals with patient discussions can boost the rates of cardiac rehabilitation. With wider adoption strategies, 45 percent more patients with cardiac disease could be treated with access to the benefits of cardiac rehabilitation, according to a study published in the Feb. 14 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.