The US Supreme Court will review a case this spring (City of Ontario v. Quon) to determine whether government employees have a reasonable expectation of privacy when e-mailing or texting using company-owned systems.

The ruling is expected to also affect private sector employees and employers’ formal and informal policies regarding electronic communications.

See story here.

A new survey of hospital nurses found that they estimate spending one quarter of their 12-hour shift on indirect patient care, with paperwork taking up much of the rest of their time.

Nurses also reported having to complete logs, checklists and other redundant paperwork that prevented them from having more time with their patients. Beyond these paperwork redundancies, nurses reported significant time being wasted trying to secure needed equipment and supplies.

The survey focused on more than 1,600 nurses in hospital settings and was conducted by Georgia-based Jackson Healthcare.

Last week at the HIMSS10 Healthcare IT Conference in Atlanta, an announcement was made proposing the establishment of two certification programs for purposes of testing and certifying health information technology.

David Blumenthal, MD, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, made the announcement regarding the certification proposal. This is the last in a series of three rules mandated under the HITECH Act, part of last February's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, that explain how providers and hospitals can qualify for bonuses for the use of certified healthcare IT.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), unveiled the rules on standards and meaningful use last December. According to the ONC, the rule will allow organizations to apply for temporary or permanent authorization to become certification bodies. The ONC is proposing the temporary certification to speed things up because of the looming deadline.

The proposed rule can be found online here.

Long held jury instructions will soon be changed to include electronic media.

The model jury instructions the Judicial Conference released to the federal judiciary in late January specify:
"You may not communicate with anyone about the case on your cellphone, through e-mail, Blackberry, iPhone, text messaging, or on Twitter, through any blog or website, through any internet chat room, or by way of any other social networking websites, including Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and YouTube."

U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson of Kansas, the chair of the Judicial Conference Committee on Court Administration and Case Management, told the nation's judges in a Jan. 28 memo that the new jury instructions "address the increasing incidence of juror use, of such devices as cellular telephones or computers, to conduct research on the internet or communicate with others about cases."

The Department of Health and Human Services issued an interim final rule with a request for comments to adopt an initial set of standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria, as required by the Public Health Service Act.

This step is the first to adopting standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria to enhance the interoperability, functionality, utility, and security of health information technology and to support its meaningful use.

The certification criteria adopted in this initial set establish the capabilities and related standards that certified electronic health record (EHR) technology will need to include in order to, at a minimum, support the achievement of the proposed meaningful use Stage 1 (beginning in 2011) by eligible professionals and eligible hospitals under the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs.

See story.

See rule.