Morning Headlines 2/7/13

Remarks by Secretary Panetta and Secretary Shinseki from the Department of Veterans Affairs

A Department of Defense meeting transcript indicates that the DoD and VA will pursue interoperability and a common user interface rather than creating a single EHR to meet the President’s goal of a joint system. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says the VA and DoD have aligned their data elements and will start a pilot project this summer on a common VistA/AHLTA user interface for physicians. He says that project, plus the recently expanded Blue Button initiative, will meet the President’s directive faster and cheaper than creating a single EHR. The departments announced in March 2011 that they would create a common joint EHR platform, saying then that their respective systems were outdated and lacking functionality.

The Advisory Board Company Acquires 360Fresh

360Fresh products use natural language and text processing to analyze information from electronic medical records and other sources, adding real-time predictive analytics capabilities for The Advisory Board Company’s Crimson customers.

Physician Satisfaction with Best-of-Breed EDIS 59% Higher than Enterprise Systems

A new KLAS report on emergency department information systems finds that ED physicians give best-of-breed ED systems higher scores because of clinical decision support, usability, and accuracy of documentation, while enterprise systems provide advantages in interoperability, continuation of care, and communication with other hospital systems.

New Children’s Electronic Health Record Format Announced

AHRQ and CMS release a guide for EHR developers that includes a minimum set of data elements and data standards for children.