As if Facebook and Twitter and other social media don’t offer enough cyber-information overload, the newest player in the age of social networking is doctor and hospital rating sites. More than 30 such rate-your-doctor Websites exist today, including Healthgrades.com and RateMDs.com, as well as more general consumer guides such as Angielist.com – more known for rating plumbers than clinicians – and Yelp.com.

As the HIMSS11 conference opened this past Sunday in Orlando, Fla., “meaningful use” of health IT were the buzzwords. So were the implementation of RFID technologies and the HIPAA conversion to the new 5010 standard. Also at the top of the agenda were the application of social technologies in healthcare and maximization of network activities.

This guest column is special to The Progressive Physician. The authors are Dr. Scott Schumacher and Lorraine Fernandes of Initiate, an IBM Company. Schumacher is Chief Scientist and Fernandes is Health Ambassador.

Determining the best way to identify patients statewide or nationally is one of the hottest topics of debate within today’s health IT community.

While the deadline for electronic record adoption is looming, some physicians remain hesitant. That’s because they view the conversion process as an expensive, time consuming, and often-overwhelming process.