Healthcare professionals are strongly urged to review and comment on the proposed meaningful use definitions and EHR interim final rule from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), according to presenters of a Webinar, hosted by Washington D.C.-based eHealth Initiative on Jan. 8.

Medical records provider MediConnect Global acquired health IT company PassportMD. The transaction cost for the personal health record (PHR) provider was undisclosed.

A right-hemisphere latency delay of 1/100 of a second in the encoding of simple sensory information as demonstrated via magnetoencephalography, or the measuring of magnetic signals, may be considered an electrophysiological marker for autism spectrum disorders, according to research published Jan. 8 in Autism Research.

Reporting, product certification and implementation deadlines represent major concerns that could affect efforts to effectively implement EHRs under the recently proposed federal regulations, according to a statement by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME).

Radiofrequency ablation can possibly alleviate the intensity of pain brought on by bone metastases, according to a study published online Jan. 4 in Cancer.

The American College of Cardiology (ACC) has filed a complaint against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in U.S. District Court, alleging that Sebelius, in her capacity as the HHS secretary, unlawfully adopted the payment rates for cardiology services in the 2010 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) by using an invalid Physician Practice Information Survey (PPIS) in a manner that threatens access to care for patients andincreases medical care costs.

Current efforts to collect and publicly report data on discharge planning are unlikely to yield large reductions in unnecessary readmissions, according to study authors in the Dec. 31 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Spectranetics, a medical device manufacturer of Colorado Springs, Colo., has agreed to pay U.S. government agencies $4.9 million in civil damages plus a $100,000 forfeiture to resolve claims pursued by the FDA and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement against the company, the Justice Department reported on Dec. 29, 2009.