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In This Issue
* 2014 Reporting Ends for Eligible Professionals; Prepare for Attestation
* eRx of Controlled Substances Up
* HIE Case Study
* New Telehealth Guide
* Blue Button Toolkit Facelift
* Health IT Safety Webinar Series
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Issue: 1                 
JANUARY 2015 

2014 Reporting Ends for Eligible Professionals; Prepare for Attestation     

CMS reminds eligible professionals participating in the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs that Dec. 31, 2014 marked the end of the 2014 calendar year (CY) and the end of the last 2014 EHR reporting period. If you are an eligible professional participating in the Medicare EHR Incentive Program, you have until Feb. 28, 2015 to attest to demonstrating meaningful use of the data collected during your EHR reporting period for the 2014 calendar year. If you are participating in the Medicaid EHR Incentive Program, please refer to your state's deadlines for attestation information. In Illinois, the Medicaid deadline is March 31, 2015. Read the full story...

eRx of Controlled Substances Up    

ONC analysts crunched the numbers and recently published a paper that found that electronic prescribing of controlled substances (EPCS) is now going on in nearly every state and is on the rise. With rampant drug diversion (theft of controlled substances) and opioid abuse, EPCS is seen as one way to help attack this problem. "Current estimates show that controlled substances comprise 12 percent of all prescriptions made each year," the analysts write in a  Buzz blog post.
HIE Case Study 
A new case study published by The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology U.S. Department of Health and Human Services focuses on health information exchange in six states (Iowa, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming). The study, by NORC at the University of Chicago, part of the evaluation of the State HIE Program, synthesizes more than 100 interviews about what is working, and what isn't, in HIE. One of the takeaways is that states "play a central role in leadership, coordination, collaboration and policy development" to identify local health IT needs and gaps.  Read the blog post!
New Telehealth Guide 
A new Telehealth Guide packed with concrete guidance and resources for implementing telehealth services in rural communities, from startup and financing to sustainability, is now available! This guide aggregates the latest resources at your fingertips about policy considerations (licensing), best practices, toolkits, and suggests ways health care organizations can employ telehealth to improve outcomes and generate revenue The guide focuses on concerns raised during the HHS/USDA Rural Health Financing workshop in Iowa in May 2014. For more information take a look at our  Buzz blog post on the latest round of grants for telehealth worth $8.6 million. 
Blue Button Toolkit Facelift 
If you haven't taken a look at the Blue Button Toolkit lately, you should. As we continue the march forward to enable more consumers with online access to their health information, we want to make sure the tools we create are useful, easy to follow and does help those who still need help with implementation and communication of patient engagement technology. With that in mind, the latest resource we've launched is the Blue Button Toolkit. You can read more about the toolkit or check out the  Blue Button Toolkit's face lift... same great content, with a new look and feel. Start building tools today to empower consumers to view, check, use and share their electronic health data!

Health IT Safety Webinar Series      

The second webinar of 10 on Health IT and patient safety will be held Friday, Jan. 30, noon-1:30 p.m. (CST). This webinar will present recent research on the role of health IT in ambulatory medication prescribing from different perspectives.  If you missed it, the first presentation discussed adverse drug events and medication errors and the potential to mitigate them using health IT. The third presentation will briefly examine a program to enhance e-prescribing in a large-scale, national interoperability network. Together, these presentations suggest that expanded use of e-prescribing will continue to support improved safety, efficient workflow, and quality.