Editor's Note An Independent Security Evaluators study of 12 hospitals found that all had vulnerabilites that could lead to patient deaths or harm, according to a May 9 report from WUSA 9. During the study, cybersecurity experts were able to remotely control respirators and patient monitors, trigger false alarms, and…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on May 9 announced the Pioneers in Quality Advisory Panel, a group of technical experts who will be informing the Joint Commission on the successes and challenges hospitals are experiencing in their adoption and use of electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs). The panel also will…

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Editor's Note A Black Book survey found that 87% of financially struggling hospitals regret their decision to replace their electronic health records (EHRs) systems, the April 29 Healthcare IT News reports. Of those that changed their original EHRs since 2011, 14% are losing inpatient revenue at a pace that wouldn’t…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on April 27 proposed two rules, scheduled to take effect in January  2017, that will ease physician documentation requirements. One rule makes changes to the “Meaningful Use” program. CMS is proposing to replace meaningful use with a new program that…

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Editor's Note Healthcare was the top target for cyberattacks last year, according to an IBM cybersecurity report. Five of the eight largest healthcare security breaches (more than 1 million records compromised) this decade took place during the first 6 months of 2015. More than 100 million healthcare records were compromised…

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Editor's Note Nearly half of patient face-to-face contacts with health care providers, such as checkups, emergency department visits, and hospital admissions, were missing from electronic health records (EHRs) in this study. The problem is caused by the inability of software systems to talk to each other. Because of the 2009 Health…

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Surgeon champions can make or break a perioperative initiative. But it’s not enough to simply identify a single champion. OR leaders must engage a wide range of physicians to improve the organizational structure of the healthcare system. At Intermountain Healthcare, a 22-hospital system based in Salt Lake City, Utah, surgical…

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Editor's Note Washington DC-area MedStar hospitals were hit by a computer virus that forced all computers offline on March 28, the Chicago Tribune reports. The shutdown of computers was the latest against US hospitals after a California hospital paid ransom to free its infected systems using bitcoin currency. The FBI…

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Editor's Note Physicians are beginning to dread what some are calling “EHR pajama time”--the 1 to 2 hours they now have to spend at home finishing up their electronic health record (EHR) documentation after their kids have gone to bed, notes the ACS Surgery News, reporting on a session at the…

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Editor's Note The number of physicians that participated in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) “meaningful use” program dropped from 228,662 in 2014 to 226,514 in 2015, and hospital participation declined from 4,177 to 4,071, Bloomberg BNA reports. The drop in participation occurred despite repeated efforts by CMS…

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