Don’t believe all the talk of how health information technology has bi-partisan support. Nothing but the most sacred cows will be considered sacred in the upcoming budget battle.

More and more physicians are using electronic health records, but a recent exam tells me the industry has a ways to go before docs actually like them.

The headline: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Win 2012 National Cybersecurity Innovation Award. My first thought: Really?

After three days of absorbing remarkably rich content at the Medical Group Management Association annual meeting, I humbly offer the following profile of a group practice well-situated for the future:

Demanding patients, whom neither HHS regulates nor physicians control, to use portals and simultaneously holding the threat of failing meaningful use tests over the heads of physicians for not succeeding as social networkers is not only bad policy; it is also amazingly unintelligent and high-handed.

One patient can have multiple identifiers within a single organization, e.g. medical record number, billing/patient account number, order number, requisition number, etc. More identifiers come into play when hospitals have multiple locations offering different types of services.