EHRs

Earlier this year, Allscripts closed its acquisition of McKesson's health IT business — a $185 million deal CEO Paul Black says will help position the company as a leading EHR supplier.

The Vancouver-area EHR overhaul, which seeks to transition the medical records of nearly 1 million Canadians to Cerner, is facing even more delays driven by even more unexpected cost increases, according to the Vancouver Sun.

Between fiscal years 2011 and 2016, the Department of Veterans Affairs funneled more than $1.1 billion to improve an EHR it is now seeking to replace, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Dec. 7.

Allscripts officials said the company reached a new milestone Dec. 8: 1 billion data shares through its application programming interfaces in a single year.

In addition to ensuring interoperability with the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs is exploring ways of enabling patients to take their digital records with them to private hospitals, according to FedScoop.

North Kansas City, Mo.-based Cerner rocked headlines this past year amid billing software concerns, its CEO's untimely passing and its contracts with federal agencies.

A key question remains amid the recently announced Downers Grove, Ill.-based Advocate Health Care and Milwaukee-based Aurora Health Care $11 billion merger: Which of the three EHRs currently used between the two systems will reign supreme?

Forty-three percent of physicians report overall dissatisfaction with their EMR experience, according to a KLAS Research report.

Amsterdam-based Royal Philips acquired Forcare, an interoperability software provider located in Zeist, the Netherlands, the company announced Dec. 5.

The Carequality Interoperability Framework has connected more than 50 percent of healthcare providers across the U.S., the nonprofit organization The Sequoia Project announced Dec. 5.