CMS and ONC have jointly released two new FAQs that help explain requirements for the transitions of care measure for Stage 2 meaningful use. The measure's objective is: The eligible professional (EP), eligible hospital, or critical access hospital (CAH) who transitions their patient to another setting of care or provider of care or refers their patient to another provider of care should provide summary care record for each transition of care or referral. Read the complete article

A compelling case for Electronic Health Records is featured on New York eHealth Collaborative's website blog in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy's devastation on the East Coast. The blog states that "while the Statewide Health Information Network is not yet connected to every hospital in the area, those already connected reaped the benefit. As Modern Healthcare wrote, 'New York's statewide health information exchange ran without a flicker, fulfilling the promise of health information technology brought into focus by Hurricane Katrina.'" Read the complete story at http://nyehealth.org/recovering-from-hurricane-sandy/.

Having trouble making up your mind about EHRs? In a new study published by the Journal of General Internal Medicine (JGIM), providers' use of EHRs was shown to lead to significantly higher care quality scores for certain health conditions compared to scores from providers using paper records. The study looked at the association between EHRs and ambulatory quality in a community-based setting. Read the findings

 Kenneth Young Center's Jennifer Cox, Susan Reynolds and Gongmin Mou spoke with IL-HITREC representatives  about success in using the ILHIE Direct Secure Messaging system.
    

Improving your patients' understanding of how the use of Electronic Health Records will enhance their care, is an important key in the health information technology movement. On HealthIT.gov, you can find a number of videos that show how Health IT allows patients, families and doctors to have access to health information, a key step to improving patient care. The videos are available at: http://www.healthit.gov/patients-families/multimedia.