Morning Headlines 3/26/13

Boulder Community Hospital computer records back on line – The Denver Post

Boulder Community Hospital is back online after more than a week operating on hospital-wide system downtime procedures. A preliminary investigation concluded that a severe hardware failure on a critical server brought the system down. IT staff were able to restore to a clean backup point captured eight hours prior to the failure. At that point, however, the task of re-entering and validating all the missing clinical information from that eight-hour window began, which added to the delay in a full return to service. A root cause analysis is underway and a full report is expected within a few weeks.

Lisa Lewis, Chief Grants Management Officer, has been tapped to become the Deputy National Coordinator for Operations

ONC has promoted Lisa Lewis to the position of deputy national coordinator for operations.

Healthcare data has become ‘the new oil’

An Information Daily article discusses the business end of stolen healthcare data, calling it the “new oil” for hackers and identity thieves. The article suggests that stolen databases of patient information are being monetized by stripping out suspicious information and selling the partial databases to marketing firms as legitimately collected contacts.

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki renews vow of claims backlog fix by 2015

In his first nationally televised interview in four years, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki reiterated his longstanding promise to reduce the VA benefits claims backlog to reasonable levels by 2015, despite the strong unlikelihood of accomplishing the task. The interview followed a highly publicized demand calling for the firing of VA Undersecretary of Benefits Allison Hickey which was made last week by Rep. Jeff Miller, chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.