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When we’re working on other people’s code–for troubleshooting or optimization purposes–we see a fair amount of usage of the ISNULL() function. Generally speaking we replace those ISNULL() references with COALESCE(). But why? There are a number of reasons: First, Microsoft has indicated they may deprecate ISNULL() in…

Think of it as insurance. You dislike having to pay for it, but it is a critical need in any organization. You can be ready for planned downtimes, but what happens when it is unplanned? As sited in HealthIT.gov about EHR downtimes, “Such unavailability can introduce substantial…

When discussing Meaningful Use with CIOs, I’ve received some comments that they pursued specific measures to meet the requirement, but they believe they’re not taking full advantage of the measure in their real-world, day-to-day workflow. With Meaningful Use Stage 3/Promoting Interoperability, the Patient Electronic Access measure introduced…

As the Manager of Patient Care Device Integration at Iatric Systems, hospital staff often ask me “With my tight IT budget and so many competing initiatives, how can I justify the spend for smart pump interoperability?” Recently, I came across an interesting article by HCA IT&S Division…

Once you start working with Microsoft’s reporting solution, you will find there are multiple versions of SSRS, and some of the versions have different specifications for the RDL files which hold your report definitions. In addition, there are different versions of Report Manager (and the rendering engine)…