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Moving forward in so many areas, including under meaningful use, will require the establishment of genuine interoperability across the inpatient-outpatient divide, and in particular, far more automated connectivity between hospitals and physicians, including those doctors in private practice. But building bridges in this area is far more complex than it first appears, say healthcare IT leaders who are guiding their organizations forward say the healthcare IT leaders who are guiding their organizations forward nationwide.

As healthcare moves forward towards new, more accountable paradigms, CMIOs in patient care organizations nationwide are finding their positions becoming more and more focused on clinical transformation and process improvement. With such evolutionary changes are coming increased staff support, new reporting relationships, and even title changes.

Quality is the focus of this year's three Healthcare Informatics/AMDIS IT Innovation Advocate Award winners. Brian Patty M.D., CMIO and team lead of HealthEast Care System, which won top honors, explains the goals and challenges of his organization's initiative to leverage clinical IT to drive quality at his organization.

The ARRA/HITECH Act has made electronic medical records a front burner issue, and many believe that EMRs will make departmental systems redundant. Some cardiologists beg to differ, arguing that cardiovascular information systems are deeply clinical and essential to the cardiovascular workflow. Here's a look at the evolution of CVIS, EMR, and their roles as the healthcare landscape is being transformed by meaningful use.

Because of competing priorities as well as cost, security, and implementation concerns, cloud-based storage development has gotten off to a slow start in healthcare. CIOs, CTOs, and other healthcare IT leaders are adopting a variety of strategies in this area, based on their organizations' needs, resources, and priorities.

Even the best-positioned hospital and health system organizations have been struggling with some aspects of meaningful use. What are the implications of their struggles for the path forward into Stages 2 and 3? A look at the current challenges on the ground, and the path ahead.

A rapid expansion of computing hardware options is paving the way to better patient engagement and increased productivity. For that to happen, CIOs must balance their choices against workflow issues, infrastructure requirements, and budgetary constraints.

Here's an inside--and detailed--look at how three hospital systems achieved HIMSS Analytics Stage 7, an objective measure of progress toward EMR implementation.

While there is no shortcut to meaningful use, getting the fundamentals right is essential to smoothing the way to qualifying for incentives.

CIOs are hard at work coming up with the most effective and affordable strategies for protecting electronic data as their hospitals move forward on electronic medical records. While the rise of cloud computing and declining network costs are offering new opportunities in dealing with potential disasters, many find there is no substitute for good planning and constant testing.

A healthcare consultant offers concrete steps that CIOs can take when creating an IT foundation for accountable care.

At a small number of patient care organizations nationwide, pioneering clinician, executive, and healthcare IT leaders are engaging in the serious work needed to lay the foundation for reducing avoidable inpatient readmissions, in such important areas as congestive heart failure. Not surprisingly, intelligently leveraging clinical IT is turning out o be a critical success factor.

Sisters of Mercy Health System chose the SaaS model as a simpler way to plan, execute, and monitor strategic business initiatives. It also provided something that was easy to use and offered quick time to value.

CIOs, CEOs, and other senior executives in hospital organizations are pursuing a number of approaches to leverage clinical and other key data in order to analyze staffing needs, and are working to optimize staffing, as they address the single biggest operating cost for most hospitals: labor.

Hospitals that have tried to shed their reliance on paper have found the task fraught with challenges. Some have found that document imaging provides a useful interim step in meeting their goal.

As patient care organizations nationwide prepare to report on meaningful use quality measures, those with enterprise data warehouses may find they have a head start. The more advanced among them are establishing workgroups to create dashboards to analyze progress and identify gaps that need addressing.