Acting CMS administrator Kerry Weems has presented his intended agenda,which promises to introduce more transparency in CMS business dealings.

David Nicholson, the chief executive of the National Health Service(NHS) of the United Kingdom, has named Sir Bruce Keogh, MD, as the NHSmedical director.

Despite widespread suspicions, Robert Kolodner, head of Healthcare andHuman Services Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT, saidthat the United States is currently on track to meet President Bush’sgoal of deploying interoperable EHR capabilities throughout the UnitedStates by 2014.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has proposed that agrant of up to $13 million be awarded for the design, creation andoperation of a successor entity to the American Health InformationCommunity (AHIC).

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said this week that $25million in new grants for healthcare technology projects would beawarded to underserved parts of the state in order to expand access tospecialty doctors.

When the lawmakers from the U.S. House and Senate return from theirsummer recess, they are set to approve unprecedented spending for theDepartment of the Veteran Affairs (VA), which includes funding forelectronic health records (EHRs) and information systems.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) nationalvoluntary system for reporting medical errors should be established andrunning by the middle of 2008, according to the acting director ofAHRQ's Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, WilliamMunier.

U.S. Healthcare and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Mike Leavitt saidthat the American Health Information Community (AHIC), a governmentadvisory group on health IT, should be replaced by an entity thatfunctions more like a corporate democracy than a political one, sohealth IT standards are created outside the political process.