The National Quality Forum has endorsed nine new U.S. voluntaryconsensus standards for health IT in the areas of electronicprescribing, EHR interoperability, care management, quality registriesand the medical home.

A consortium led by the Colorado Hospital Association willdevelop the Colorado Telehealth Network with an award from the FederalCommunications Commission (FCC) to enable the expansion ofbroadband communication to rural areas of the state.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health InformationTechnology (ONCHIT) will host a one-day town hall meeting Oct. 15 todiscuss how health IT can be utilized to prevent and detect medicalidentity theft.

With contracts expiring for as many as 21 state Medicaid Management Information Systems over the next five years, state programs are expected to disburse $380 billion in the coming year for health IT enhancements, according to a new report published by market research firm Input.

The utilization of automated testing tools and image analysis softwarein Belgium and Luxembourg has allowed these countries to succesfullyimplement a centralized daily quality assurance program for all its CR-and DR-based digital mammography screening modalities with a minimalimpact on network bandwidth and clinical personnel.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Friday released twoproposed rules to adopt updated standards for HIPAA transaction setsand to replace the ICD-9 codes for diagnoses and procedures by October2011.

A Medicare pay-for-performance (P4P) demonstration project that relieson health IT to hold down healthcare costs and improve quality hasresulted in extra earnings of $16.7 million for 10 large group medicalpractices across the United States.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavittdiscussed how to build a value-driven healthcare system at an Aug. 1town hall meeting organized by the North Carolina HealthcareInformation and Communications Alliance (NCHICA) and the WNC HealthNetwork in Asheville, N.C.