Currently, one of the most important goals in the health IT industry is making data truly interoperable.

In pursuit of that goal, healthcare organizations are seeking ways to match patient data and locate records in a fragmented digital environment where technology and processes simply aren’t set up to allow efficient data exchange and access. On top of that, regulatory requirements are putting additional pressure on healthcare organizations to meet benchmarks and reporting mandates.

Think of where your hospital’s IT department was six years ago. Now, consider where it is today — and how you see it evolving in the future.

In the past six years, Halifax Health has undergone a total transformation in how we approach IT, from having experienced a number of challenges, to being named the Best Place to Work in IT in midsized organizations for three straight years by Computerworld.

Whether a hospital has 6 or 600 beds, clinicians require the right tools to provide quality patient care. If only it were that simple, right?

Procuring a modern EHR can be complex and costly, pulling on an organization’s resources from all angles — not to mention having to navigate numerous third party products in order to meet all their needs. For smaller healthcare organizations, this can become an especially daunting experience.

On Halloween, as I was waiting for MACRA's Quality Payment Program (QPP) Year 2 ruling to be finalized, I was pondering tricks and treats. Would practices find a full sized candy bar when the door opened or a toothbrush? As trick-or-treaters often find, the ruling was a little of both. For me, the trick is a ruling that came in at a hefty 1,653 pages: the treat, the 20+ page fact sheet and executive summary.

For the third year in a row, MEDITECH proudly hosted the CommonWell Health Alliance Annual General Meeting and Fall Summit last week at our Joanne Wood Conference Center in Foxborough, Massachusetts. The annual Member gathering provides a valuable opportunity to gather and reflect on the many achievements the Alliance and its members have attained throughout the year.

Recently, I was inspired by a HIStalk webinar, “3 Secrets to Leadership Success for Women in Healthcare IT,” hosted by two female executives of health IT companies, Liz Johnson and Nancy Ham. During the webinar, Ham and Johnson provided valuable advice to women who are interested in progressing in their careers to a leadership position, but who may experience unconscious or conscious gender bias.