Morning Headlines 3/12/13

UConn Health Center Warns Patients of Privacy Breach

The University of Connecticut Health Center is notifying patients of a privacy breach that could affect around 1,400 patient records, saying that a former employee inappropriately accessed patient records that were beyond the scope of the employee’s responsibilities.

Electronic discharge tool helps rein in HF readmissions

Analysts at Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City designed a retrospective study that evaluated heart failure discharges between January 2011 and September 2012.Their goal was to assess whether the use of electronic discharge orders affect adherence to core measures and 30-day, all-cause readmissions of patients with HF. At the conclusion of the study, the readmission rate for patients whose discharge involved the electronic tool was 15.5 percent compared with 18 percent when the tool was not used.

CHS, Cleveland Clinic Form Strategic Alliance

Cleveland Clinic announces a strategic partnership with Community Health Systems’ network of 135 affiliated community hospitals. Cleveland Clinic will help CHS establish clinical integration programs at its affiliated hospitals, which will provide a mechanism for the sharing of data and in time will support predictive modeling initiatives.

In Pursuit Of Interoperability For The Common Good

Forbes publishes a guest article by Arien Malec, VP strategy and product marketing at RelayHealth, and David McCallie MD, VP medical informatics at Cerner, regarding CommonWell. The article is short on details and concludes by broadcasting an open invitation to all vendors to join the alliance.