MADISON - Think consumers aren't paying to the health IT investments you make? Think again. A new study from Deloitte suggests that consumers are indeed interested in knowing what you're spending on health IT, especially tools that they might end up using directly.

According to the 2009 Deloitte Survey of Healthcare Consumers, more than half (55 percent) of consumers would like to communicate with their doctor via email, and 57 percent would like to schedule appointments, buying prescriptions and completing other transactions.

The 2009 Survey of Health Care Consumers, conducted by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, is Deloitte's second annual study of health care consumers' attitudes, behaviors and unmet needs. It offers health care industry leaders and policymakers a comprehensive and timely perspective about how Americans approach their health, health care and health insurance.

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<b>WASHINGTON</b> - On Friday, April 17, 2009, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued guidance specifying the technologies and methodologies that render protected health information unusable, unreadable, or indecipherable to unauthorized individuals, as required by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act passed as part of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).  This guidance was developed through a joint effort by the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR), Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

 This guidance relates to two forthcoming breach notification regulations - one to be issued by HHS for covered entities and their business associates under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) (Sec. 13402 of HITECH) and one to be issued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for vendors of personal health records and other non-HIPAA covered entities (Sec. 13407 of HITECH).  HITECH requires these regulations to be published within 180 days of enactment.  If the entities subject to the regulations apply the technologies and methodologies specified in the guidance to secure information, they will not be required to provide the notifications required by the regulations in the event the information is breached.  

 In addition to this guidance, HHS has also concurrently issued a request for information (RFI) soliciting public comment on the breach notification provisions of the HITECH Act to inform future rulemaking and updates to the guidance.  The guidance and RFI is available at www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy.  Once published in the Federal Register, the guidance and RFI will also be available for public comment at www.regulations.gov.

UPDATE!! - On April 7, 2009, CMS announced that it will not implement Phase II of the EHR Demonstration. CMS will continue with Phase I implementation, including local kick off meetings for more than 400 selected practices scheduled in May. Phase I demonstration operations will begin June 1, 2009. For more information on this decision, please see the download below named "Phase II Announcement  April 7, 2009."

Google is encountering protests from users who say the information its Google Health beta Website presents has the potential to be inaccurate when it comes to electronic medical records. 

Google Health, Google's health care IT solution, has been taken to task by physicians who say the billing information it uses for some patients' electronic medical records can give an inaccurate picture of their health conditions. Since rolling out in Feb. 2008, Google Health has been positioned as competition for Microsoft's health care IT offerings, as well as sites such as WebMD.

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MILWAUKEE - In a joint venture that provides customers with vendor of choice and quality of care solutions TeraMedica Healthcare Technology, an enterprise imaging and information management company, announced today that they are partnering with Compressus Inc., a provider of interoperability and workflow solutions. Leveraging the synergies of TeraMedica's Evercore -Clinical Enterprise Suite solution and the Compressus MEDxConnect product suite allows physicians and patients alike, to instantly access medical images such as X-rays, MRI scans or Cardiology exams, as well as other types of clinical digital content such as electronic reports, from a single work list.

Will the massive investment in healthcare IT will be meaningless in a global economy if the technology doesn't rein in runaway costs because healthcare spending is unsustainable in the current economic climate? According to former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan this may be the case. 

Simply pumping more dollars into Medicare will not solve the healthcare crisis in America. "We have to find a way to curtail the federal funding," Greenspan said in a keynote address to the annual HIMSS conference, and perhaps IT is that way.

"If you cannot solve the overall funding problem, the [global] competitive issue will be quite secondary," Greenspan said. "There's going to be a clash invariably because resources are not going to be as ample as they have been."

Today, I am delighted to launch the Fusion Healthcare Blog as a forum for health information technology buyers, users, integrators, investors and developers.  We want you to be part of the discussion. This blog will co-exist with WTN Media's Digital Healthcare Conferences. The next event is scheduled for May 6 - 7 in Madison, Wisconsin Please see www.dhc2009.com and come join us. 

Our initial coverage and blog topics will be form HIMSS 09 and lead up to DHC 2009. This is your community, so what would you like to see covered on Fusion Healthcare?