The Office for Civil Right (OCR) in the Department of Health and Human Services, in accordance with the Privacy Act, has proposed to modify the Program Information Management System (PIMS), regarding its use of data from organizations concerning breaches of protected health information.

Health Level Seven International (HL7) has strongly recommended that health IT other than EHR systems be certified in its comments to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) supporting forward movement on the development of programs for the voluntary certification of health IT.

Medical transcription company MedQuist, its majority shareholder CBay and health IT company Spheris has announced that the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware has approved the sale of substantially all of Spheris assets to MedQuist and CBay.

Phase Forward, a provider of data management technologies for clinical trials and drug safety, has agreed to be acquired by Oracle for approximately $685 million.

Providers and policy makers should consider alternative software and informatics models before investing in currently available EMR systems, according to Rushika Fernandopulle, principal with Renaissance Health in Cambridge, Mass., and Neil Patel, associate medical director of the AtlantiCare Special Care Center in Atlantic City, N.J., in an opinion article in the April edition of Health Affairs.

Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center and Mount St. Marys Hospital have joined western New York clinical information exchange HEALTHeLINK.

Healthcare consulting firm Divurgent has joined the Foundation of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME).

We cannot only focus on quality measurement Measuring is essential but not sufficient to improve quality, said Louis Diamond, MBChC, PACP, vice president and medical director for Thomson Reuters Healthcare and Science in a recent informational webinar on quality initiatives, sponsored by HIMSS.