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SOUTHINGTON, CT - The hours-long wait in the emergency department is the standard of almost any hospital horror story - for the hospital as well as the patient. It's frustrating for the patient who wants to be treated, and for the hospital administrator who wants to provide quality care and ensure a good rapport with the community.

NASHVILLE - Regional Health in South Dakota advocates standardized electronic charting system as a means to improve care coordination while reducing legal risks. The five-hospital group is the largest healthcare system in the Black Hills region of the state. In 2009, Regional Health got the green light to transform its paper charting system into a client/server electronic system uniting all the hospitals.

Blogging, tweeting, texting and facebooking have become routine for many physicians as well as many other healthcare professionals. In this issue, Associate Editor Molly Merrill talks to docs who connect with their patients, colleagues and the public via social media (Cover story and P. 23). She discovers, what she already knew, social platforms aren't just for idle banter.

Alan Dabbiere, co-founder and chairman of AirWatch, an Atlanta-based provider of smartphone and mobile device management solutions, is looking for one successful mobile health program to help change the course of healthcare.He thinks a $100,000 donation to Virginia's Inova Health System may move that effort along."We want to see one real successful home run right here," said Dabbiere. "Once the healthcare industry understands the value of the smartphone, all of a sudden the value proposition changes dramatically."

The Department of Veterans Affairs expects on Oct. 1 to let clinicians in its hospitals and other employees use mobile devices - likely Apple's iPhone among others - once they are verified as secure and that any personal information stored on them is encrypted.VA did not disclose which devices would get the go-ahead but will focus on a "particular set of very popular devices," said Roger Baker, VA CIO. The sole VA-approved mobile device currently is the BlackBerry smartphone, which VA acquired for its employees.

The University of Utah is spearheading a pilot project designed to connect remote and underserved residents dealing with chronic conditions to needed healthcare services and providers through telemedicine.