Twelve communities have been selected to take part in a new national Medicare demonstration project using EHR incentives.  The five-year project is the first of its kind. The community areas that were selected are Alabama, Delaware, Jacksonville, FL (multi-county), Georgia, Maine, Louisiana, Maryland/Washington, DC, Oklahoma, Pittsburgh, PA (multi-county), South Dakota (multi-state), Virginia, and Madison, WI (multi-county).

Data from a new study shows how medical surgical nurses spend their time.  More than 75 percent of nurses' time was spent in nursing practice, but only patient care activities comprised only 19.3 percent of nursing practice.

Kaiser Permanente announced that it is partnering with Microsoft's HealthVault personal health records platform to offer its members a way to manage their own health data.  A Kaiser employee pilot is planned before a full rollout of the service at a later date.

The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care's 2008 study offers data for a discussion of how much care patients receive and if additional care means better care.

Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports has created a hospital ratings service.  The service rates about 3,000 facilities and aims to provide consumers with more data needed for choosing where to get their health care.

Many health care providers use patient records to send fundraising appeals to patients.  Often times the permission is in the forms a patient signs when getting care.  An article in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle discusses fundraising and privacy, revealing that a number of patients are upset about the practice.