Spectra Laboratories East, a lab division of Fresenius Medical Care North America in Rockleigh, N.J., has installed McKessons Horizon Lab laboratory information system (LIS) to improve workflow associated with more than 30 million tests Spectra performs annually.

East Orange General Hospital in East Orange, N.J., has signed an agreement to install the portfolio of GE Healthcares Centricity Enterprise.

Lumedx has implemented its cardiovascular PACS at seven hospital affiliates within Iowa Health System.

Acumen Solutions has been selected to provide a cloud computing customer relationship management and project management application to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services' Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC).

Prompted by recent healthcare and immigration reform debates, an investigation of healthcare spending from 1999 to 2006 found that the cost of providing healthcare to immigrants is lower than the cost of providing care to U.S. natives and that immigrants are not contributing disproportionately to high healthcare costs in public programs, including Medicaid, according to a study published online Feb. 11 in Health Affairs.

Four community hospitals in Texas have formed a rural regional health information organization (RHIO), powered by a Web-based EMR from Prognosis Health Information Systems that provides clinicians with a view of patient data.

Akron General Health System in Akron, Ohio, has purchased Practice Partner EHR/practice management system from McKesson, offering it to its physician hospital organization and additional affiliated physicians.

While many U.S. physicians identify language or cultural barriers as obstacles to providing high-quality patient care, physicians' efforts to overcome communication barriers are modest and uneven, according to a report released by the Center for Studying Health System Change.