Novarad has released NovaDash, a dashboard program for radiology administrators that enables tracking of radiologist productivity as well as real-time and long-term data trends and predictions.

The Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC), a nonprofit standards development organization and accrediting body, has adopted new program criteria for 2011.

Clyde W. Yancy, MD, has been named the Magerstadt professor and chief of the division of cardiology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

A vast majority81 percentof acute care non-federal hospitals say they will apply for EHR incentive payments, and close to 25 percent of office-based physicians nationwide have adopted an EHR, according to survey results released today by the office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC).

Reflecting on a handful of recent studies, a few points jump out. One obvious observation is that healthcare is benefitting from incredible leaps in technical capabilities. The rapid dissemination of cardiac CT angiography has reinvented cardiac imaging, reducing the number of invasive diagnostic angiographies, accelerating diagnosis and decision-making and improving patient care and workflow. And tremendous leaps in computer-aided detection (CAD) technology nudge pulmonary embolism CAD from the realm of possible to the probable.

Geisinger Health System acknowledged that some protected health information (PHI) of approximately 2,928 patients had been disclosed in an unauthorized manner in a press release dated Dec. 27, 2010. Affected patients were notified by letter, according to the provider.

Fifteen years ago, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) included a provision for a Unique National Identifier to streamline sharing of patient records across enterprises. Although experts described the identifier as a critical building block of electric health records and essential to achieving quality and safety goals, the privacy lobby persuaded Congress to repeal the provision one year later. Today, as the U.S. pushes toward a National Health Information Network (NHIN) and universal EHRs, lawmakers are eerily quiet on the issue.

While current CT scanners come equipped with many dose reduction techniques, more operator training, education and automated tools are needed to facilitate dose reduction during imaging exams, Cynthia H. McCollough, PhD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said during a presentation Nov. 28 at the 96th annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in Chicago.