No one faces a constantly changing landscape more than the CIO at a large health care institution. Until recently, Michael T. Balassone was CIO at West Virginia University Hospitals, a 522-bed teaching hospital and medical complex in Morgantown. He currently serves as senior information officer, University Medical Associates, Medical University of

Increasingly, radiology-practice CIOs and their hospital counterparts are being called on to interact with leadership across the organization to help drive strategic initiatives. This new level of responsibility requires CIOs to be precise and prepared for conversations with their peers across all of the organization’s business functions.

What do hospital administrators and their CIOs fear above all else? It may be information theft, especially if that information includes sensitive patient data. Nothing grabs the attention as completely as learning that a laptop laden with patient data has slipped out the door. With preparation, though, such an event may be prevented, and if it is

No sooner did CMS call for an October 1, 2011, compliance date for the switch from ICD-9 to ICD-10 codes than a hue and cry arose from the health care industry, claiming that the change comes too soon.

They’re coming, and in many hospitals, they have already arrived: multidetector CT (MDCT), CT angiography (CTA), and advanced 3D imaging. This wonderful new modality offers the promise of evaluating disease processes from atherosclerosis to cancer to trauma more quickly, safely, and accurately than older techniques can. CTA is already replacing

High hopes have been pinned on the potential of IT to improve health care delivery here and around the world, but the current focus on standards may be misplaced, according to a new paper¹ published online on August 19, 2008, by Health Affairs. The authors draw on the observations and surveys of Connecting for Health (a public–private collaborative

Pulmonary hypertension is a complex process affecting pulmonary and cardiac functions. It is defined as a pulmonary pressure of more than 30 mm Hg. Its etiologies can be categorized as preload, pulmonary, or afterload pathologies. Preload abnormalities include any processes that may lead to increased pulmonary blood flow, such as left-to-right

Six months ago, Jesse Salen, vice president of sales and technology for Online Radiology Medical Group (ORMG), Riverside, Calif, found himself in a situation familiar to many radiology practices: upgrade ORMG’s RIS/PACS platform or face dissolution. ORMG had been in operation for nearly a decade, but the practice’s single-database PACS wasn’t