New Year, New Name, New Look
By Ken Congdon
As editor in chief, I’m thrilled to bring you the first issue of our magazine to be produced under our new moniker of Health IT Outcomes! It’s been a long journey to this point, and wouldn’t have been possible without the tireless dedication of our entire staff. We hope you enjoy the results.
While we clued you into our new name and brand in our last issue, there were a few other changes we kept under wraps until now. First is the new layout of the magazine. We felt the name change provided the perfect opportunity for us to revamp the look of our print issues. Our goal was to provide a fresher, more streamlined design that enhances the visual appeal of the powerful original health IT articles produced by our writing staff. Hopefully, we hit the mark.
Next, and more importantly, is the addition of the following tagline to our cover — Providers Transforming Healthcare With Information Technology. We believe this statement, in conjunction with our name, helps to clarify and reinforce our editorial style and mission. At Health IT Outcomes, we are dedicated to covering health IT implementations from the providers’ (e.g. hospitals, group practices, clinics, etc.) point of view. Our editorial content is generated from interviews with health leaders (e.g. hospital C-level executives, IT leaders, clinical champions, etc.), and is designed to chronicle how these providers are improving their organizations and the healthcare system through successful IT adoption. Through these real-world technology applications, we provide our readers with a blueprint for how to get the most out of their own IT implementations.
It’s fitting that in our first issue as Health IT Outcomes, we’re reviewing the results of our third annual Health IT Trends reader survey. This topic was the impetus for our first-ever print issue, and continues to be our most anticipated issue each year. After reviewing the results of this year’s survey, it’s clear that we weren’t the only ones that implemented big changes in 2013 and are looking forward to a productive 2014. Whether it’s ripping and replacing an EHR, striving to meet Meaningful Use criteria, or preparing for the transition to ICD-10, hospitals, group practices, and other health providers are keenly focused on health IT. In fact, this year’s survey indicates an increased urgency to implement a wide variety of health IT initiatives — from HIE to patient portals to revenue cycle management solutions. Moreover, a number of federal mandates and deadlines continue to place pressure on providers to get their health IT ships in order. The trends revealed by our survey are indeed telling. I invite you to review the survey results and analysis starting on page 8 as well as the rest of the valuable content contained in this issue.