Health information interoperability efforts between the Veterans Health Administration and the Military Health System suffered another setback, as the Department of Veterans Affairs cut off access to the Defense Department's AHLTA EMR after VA officials found errors in medical records downloaded from AHLTA.

No patients were injured as a result of the inaccurate data, according to the VA, but "the potential exists for decisions regarding patient care to be made using incorrect or incomplete data," the VA said in a patient-safety alert sent out last Wednesday.

VA officials first discovered problems with the data exchange late last month when a VA clinician found a record in AHLTA indicating that a female patient had been prescribed a drug for erectile dysfunction. NextGov reports that the clinician's query actually had returned the record of another patient. "The VA clinician may see the patient's data during one session, but another session may not display the data previously seen," the VA alert explains. "This problem occurs intermittently and has been reported when querying DoD laboratory, pharmacy and radiology reports."

For more on this computer glitch:
- read this NextGov story
- see the VA's safety alert (.pdf)

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Last week, we heard optimism from the likes of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society and the College of Health Information Management Executives about the prospects of healthcare organizations earning federal stimulus money for achieving meaningful use of EMRs. But, with more than 27,000 people and close to 900 vendors packed into the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta for HIMSS10, there were bound to be some differing opinions. Some even came from outside of Atlanta.

The Medical Group Management Association on Friday released the results of a survey saying that more than two-thirds of practice executives believe that physician productivity would decrease because of the current proposed CMS criteria for meaningful use. Though 31 percent of respondents said productivity would increase by more than 10 percent, the MGMA still was critical of the proposal. "If the final rule mirrors those outlined in the current proposal, there is significant risk that the program will fail to meet the intent of the legislation, and that a historic opportunity to transform the nation's healthcare system will be missed," MGMA chief Dr. William F. Jessee said in a statement. (Jessee also announced last week that he would retire in the fall of 2011.)

Meanwhile, Wolters Kluwer Health, which produces content for clinical decision support systems, announced the results of a survey of its own that found that only 3.8 percent of hospital clinical, IT and administrative executives viewed eligibility for stimulus funding as a key reason to adopt order sets. Leading the list was better quality of care, named by 54.9 percent of respondents, followed by advancing the practice of evidence-based medicine, at 52.8 percent.

For further information:
- take a look at this HealthLeaders Media story
- see this Wolters Kluwer press release

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The Virginia State Legislature last week unanimously approved legislation that would make the state the 12th in the nation to mandate insurance coverage for telemedicine services. The bill, sponsored by state Sen. William Wampler Jr. (R-Bristol), calls on health insurance companies, HMOs and healthcare subscription plans to provide full coverage for telemedicine services, defined as interactive audio, video or other electronic media for the purpose of medical diagnosis, consultation or treatment. Insurers are allowed to perform utilization review to determine whether telemedicine is appropriate in specific cases.

"This is one more indication that telemedicine is now fully accepted by providers, policy makers, consumers and insurers as an important way to increase access, improve quality and reduce costs in the delivery of healthcare" American Telemedicine Association CEO Jonathan D. Linkous says in a press release. The current ATA president is Dr. Karen Rheuban, medical director of the Office of Telemedicine at the University of Virginia. In the same statement, Rheuban thanked the "leaders of the state legislature who have taken the bold step to improve the lives of the residents of Virginia."

Once Gov. Bob McDonnell signs the legislation, Virginia will join California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Oregon and Texas in requiring coverage of telemedicine services, according to ATA.

For more:
- read this American Telemedicine Association press release

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It's been a decade since the height of Napster's popularity, but file sharing remains rampant on the Internet through networks such as Limewire, BitTorrent and Kazaa. And that may threaten the security of personally identifiable health information, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

Researchers at the University of Ottawa in Canada used widely available file-sharing software to access documents containing health and financial information from patients at various locations in Canada and the United States. Lead author Khaled El Emam says that his team found that unauthorized users actively searched for files containing such data. "There is no obvious innocent reason why anyone would be looking for this kind of information," El Emam says, according to Healthcare IT News.

"Without additional protection on the health records, like encryption or elevated access controls, it is entirely possible that a mis-configured file sharing tool could gain full access to the records," Robert Grapes, chief technologist of IT security firm Cloakware, says in Healthcare IT News.

To learn more about this study:
- check out this Healthcare IT News story
- read the JAMIA paper

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It may have been a coincidence that IBM closed on its acquisition of Initiate Systems just as HIMSS10 got underway in Atlanta last week. We're certain that it was no coincidence that IBM introduced a product called Initiate Exchange on the very same day it announced the closing of the Initiate deal. "The acquisition was driven by IBM's desire to enhance its ability to help healthcare clients draw on data from hospitals, doctors' offices and payers to create a single, trusted shareable view of millions individual patient records," an IBM  press release read.

Initiate Exchange, which itself is the result of Initiate's acquisition of HIE services vendor Accenx just last October, fosters health information exchange between health systems and physician practices. The product focuses on the master patient index to assure that health professionals have access to the right information on the right patient at the point of care. (See our story in today's FierceHealthIT on the interoperability problems between the VA and DoD to understand why this is so important.)

At HIMSS, Initiate marketing VP Gina Sandon told FierceHealthIT that Initiate Exchange would be IBM's first software-as-a-service offering in healthcare and that the target market would be integrated delivery networks, payers and regional health information organizations.

For more:
- click on this IBM press release

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Physicians, surprise, are less likely than risk managers to admit the occurrence of a medical error, though doctors generally are quicker to apologize to patients after an error than are risk managers, according to a study in this month's Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety. Both groups agree, however, that reporting mechanisms leave a lot to be desired. The story doesn't explicitly say so, but we'd be willing to venture that EMRs and IT in general could go a long way toward improving reporting of adverse events--and toward guarding against human error. News brief

> Aetna has introduced what it calls the first paperless provider contracting process. Press release

> Connectivity firm Carefx will supply clinical workflow technology to the Military Health System. Press release

> Imaging IT company Shared Medical Services (not Shared Medical Systems, which Siemens acquired in 2000) is still going strong after 30 years. News brief

> Cigna will offer Intuit's Quicken Health Expense Tracker, including online bill-paying services, to all medical and pharmacy plan enrollees at no additional charge. Press release 

And Finally... RIP, Internet Explorer 6. Article