The surge in imaging study volume and pursuit of quality has yielded both tremendous benefits and contentious repercussions for patients, providers and payors. But behind the scenes, IT leadership is working on a cardinal issuewhere to store the ballooning number of studies and allow quick recall when needed.

Healthcare systems and radiology practices are beginning to tap into health information exchanges (HIEs), with some exchanging HIEs prized peacock: images. Early adopters are fueling growth, boosting efficiency and cutting costs as well as discovering the value of collaboration by embracing data sharing among competitors.

Novarad has released NovaDash, a dashboard program for radiology administrators that enables tracking of radiologist productivity as well as real-time and long-term data trends and predictions.

The Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC), a nonprofit standards development organization and accrediting body, has adopted new program criteria for 2011.

A vast majority81 percentof acute care non-federal hospitals say they will apply for EHR incentive payments, and close to 25 percent of office-based physicians nationwide have adopted an EHR, according to survey results released today by the office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC).

Geisinger Health System acknowledged that some protected health information (PHI) of approximately 2,928 patients had been disclosed in an unauthorized manner in a press release dated Dec. 27, 2010. Affected patients were notified by letter, according to the provider.

Fifteen years ago, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) included a provision for a Unique National Identifier to streamline sharing of patient records across enterprises. Although experts described the identifier as a critical building block of electric health records and essential to achieving quality and safety goals, the privacy lobby persuaded Congress to repeal the provision one year later. Today, as the U.S. pushes toward a National Health Information Network (NHIN) and universal EHRs, lawmakers are eerily quiet on the issue.

Merge Healthcare, a health IT developer, released its MergeCOM-3 DICOM Toolkit at the 96th annual scientific meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in Chicago, Nov. 28 to Dec. 3.