Dear Healthcare IT Insider,
As we go to press with this edition of the Healthcare IT Insider, HIT software users and developers are struggling to make sense of a letter sent last week by a U.S. senator inquiring about problems with IT software.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent the letter on January 20 to 31 hospitals, asking for feedback on their problems with IT software. The letter states Grassley's concerns about interoperability problems between applications and the lack of a national system for reporting software errors and failures.
How will the letter affect the HIT industry? It's not clear yet, but you can learn more by clicking here.
In other news, you probably will not be surprised to learn that our coverage of Dr. Rafel Tappouni's RSNA presentation about what Hershey Medical Center physicians want in a radiology report was one of the top 10 most read articles throughout the month of December.
Similarly, thousands of readers were interested in our article about the newly established library of best-practice structured report templates available free of charge from the RSNA.
So it seemed appropriate to delve into the topic of structured reporting for our Insider Exclusive article this issue. We joined a packed room of several hundred RSNA 2009 attendees for a lively special focus session discussing the topic of "how much structure is enough." Click here to read about a session that you shouldn't have missed.
As the healthcare reform debate rages in the halls of the U.S. Congress, where there is at least general agreement that adopting healthcare IT may improve patient treatment and efficiency of healthcare delivery, several studies have been published about converting to electronic recordkeeping. A study commissioned by the U.K.'s National Programme for IT is a sobering meta-analysis about the scalability and transferability of electronic medical record adoption. Click here to learn more.
Meanwhile, a report from the European Commission isn't so dour, noting that healthcare IT investments can produce impressive socioeconomic returns. Click here for details.
As always, I look forward to receiving your e-mails with comments and suggestions for articles in your Healthcare IT Digital Community. And if you haven't yet done so, please contribute to the relief effort in Haiti.
