This article focuses on the requirements and current developments in clinical decision support technologies for immunizations (CDSi) in both the public health and clinical communities, with an emphasis on shareable solutions. The requirements of the Electronic Health Record Incentive Programs have raised some unique challenges for the clinical community, including vocabulary mapping, update of changing guidelines, single immunization schedule, and scalability. This article discusses new, collaborative approaches whose long-term goal is to make CDSi more sustainable for both the public and private sectors.

Jason Goldwater explains how blockchain technology is used to foster the development of patient-reported outcome measures in a detailed white paper from the National Quality Forum.

The AHA supports many of CMS’s proposed policy changes that relieve regulatory burden and foster greater collaboration across the health care system, including the facility-based measurement in the MIPS and the gradual, flexible increase in reporting requirements.

IMPORTANCE Social determinants of health shape both children’s immediate health and their lifetime risk for disease. Increasingly, pediatric health care organizations are intervening to address family social adversity. However, little evidence is available on the effectiveness of related interventions. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE To our knowledge, this investigation is the first randomized clinical trial to evaluate health outcomes of a pediatric social needs navigation program. Compared with an active control at 4 months after enrollment, the intervention significantly decreased families’ reports of social needs and significantly improved children’s overall health status as reported by caregivers. These findings support the feasibility and potential effect of addressing social needs in pediatric health care settings. Gottlieb et al., 2016.

The goals of this cross-sectional study were to (a) describe the prevalence of 5 basic social needs in a cohort of parents attending an urban teaching hospital–based pediatric clinic, (b) assess parental attitudes toward seeking assistance from their child’s provider, and (c) examine resident providers’ attitudes and behaviors toward addressing these needs. Parents (n = 100) reported a median of 2 basic needs at the pediatric visit. The most common was employment (52%), followed by education (34%), child care (19%), food (16%), and housing (10%). Most parents (67%) had positive attitudes toward requesting assistance from their child’s pediatrician. The majority of resident providers (91%) believed in the importance of addressing social needs; however, few reported routinely screening for these needs (range, 11% to 18%). There is great potential for assisting low-income parents within the medical home. Further practice-based interventions are needed to enhance providers’ self-efficacy to screen and address low-income families’ needs at pediatric visits. Garg et al., 2009

Special article from the New England Journal of Medicine from Steven A Schroeder: 

I first summarize where the United States stands in international rankings of health status. Next, using the concept of determinants of premature death as a key measure of health status, I discuss pathways to improvement, emphasizing lessons learned from tobacco control and acknowledging the reality that better health (lower mortality and a higher level of functioning) cannot be achieved without paying greater attention to poor Americans. I conclude with speculations on why we have not focused on improving health in the United States and what it would take to make that happen.

Verato covers trending topics about data analytics and interoperablity.

Strategic Interests disscusses improving transitions of care, practice transformation efforts, analytics and much more.

FHIR is a new standard that defines a web API and related specifications for health data exchange.

We are now in the era of electronic health records (EHR), MACRA and a plethora of digital clinical data, which means we can take advantage of what happens today, sometimes in real-time.