VA hospitals plan to speed up the process of obtaining medical records from private physicians by using a private contractor and Internet connections in a new pilot project, according to a news release by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Officials from the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, Tenn., are notifying approximately 8,000 patients that the facility did not properly dispose of hospital reports containing private information, posing potential risk of a privacy data breach, according to a…

The Veterans Affairs Department will provide an online tool veterans can use to compare the agency's 153 hospitals, similar to the Hospital Compare website, according to a Government Health IT news report.

Anesthesia, like many other specialties, is likely to undergo significant changes as the effects of health reform become clearer. Industry experts discuss five ways anesthesia provision will change over the next several years.

A less-invasive method to determine the state of non-small-cell lung cancer may spare patients the need for general anesthesia and surgery, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

National health IT coordinator David Blumenthal, MD, has delayed a panel vote on operational rules for the nationwide health information network, according to a Government Health IT news report.

Three Houston-based Memorial Hermann Healthcare System hospitals — Memorial Hermann Katy, Sugar Land and Southeast — have reached Stage 6 of seven stages of the HIMSS Analytics EMR adoption model, developed in 2005 as a method for evaluating the progress…

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will give healthcare providers the ability to track the status of incentive payments online, a feature similar to the "Where's My Refund" feature on the Internal Revenue Service's income tax site, according to…

The California Department of Public Health has penalized six California hospitals and a nursing home with fines totaling more than $792,000 after determining the healthcare facilities failed to prevent unauthorized access to confidential patient medical information, according to a CDPH…

A study released by Beacon Partners, a healthcare management consulting firm, suggests that a majority of healthcare organizations and providers seeking to achieve meaningful use cite quality reporting as their biggest concern, according to a company news release.