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EHR Standardization Key to Health IT Progress, ONC Brief Says. Standardization of electronic health records is the key to improved care coordination and quality, according to an Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT policy brief on Beacon communities, EHR Intelligence reports (Murphy, EHR Intelligence, 8/20). The 2009 federal economic stimulus package included funds for Beacon community grants aimed at helping health care providers use health IT in their communities (iHealthBeat, 4/23).

Details of Brief ONC reiterated its stance that standardization of reporting and reviewing quality measures will lead to progress in health care reform, EHR Intelligence reports. "Quality measurement is a critical component of a learning health care system," the brief states, adding, "At present, limited use of standardized data documentation practices and health IT capabilities not only hampers data validity, but also hinders the aggregation and comparison of quality data from multiple providers and sites of care. " Examples of Success. Join LinkedIn.

Health Information Technology in the United States 2013. Seven years after their inaugural report on health information technology (HIT), researchers from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Mathematica Policy Research, and Harvard School of Public Health find that providers increasingly have adopted HIT in meaningful ways, driven in the last few years by federal financial incentives. Since 2010, the proportion of hospitals having a basic electronic health record (EHR) has tripled.

More than 38 percent of physicians report having adopted basic EHRs in 2012. 42 percent have implemented systems that meet federal Meaningful Use Stage 1 criteria, up from 4.4 percent in 2010. Hospitals most likely to meet more stringent Stage 2 criteria were larger, teaching, private nonprofit hospitals in urban areas. U.S. providers could do more using HIT to engage patients with educational materials tailored to an individual’s diagnosis and health literacy level.

Rtc_adoption_of_healthit_and_relatedefforts.pdf. LjkMModal : Can she do it? Go dark? Off... Survey: Physicians show “constrained optimism” for healthcare reform, amidst lingering concerns. Many of the most significant provisions of the Affordable Care Act, such as payment models and health insurance exchanges, have yet to take effect.

There’s concern from physicians losing clinical autonomy as solo practices assimilate with hospitals and what the impact of Medicare reimbursement penalties will be. And yet, the efficiencies created by health IT systems and accountable care organizations are slowly changing attitudes toward healthcare reform. An author of a survey assessing physician attitudes toward healthcare reform indicated that physicians seem to be shifting from denial to reluctant acceptance. In an interview with MedCity News, Paul Keckley, the executive director of Deloitte Center for Health Solutions and an author of the report, said he was surprised by the level of “constrained optimism” by physicians over healthcare reform and said he had seen some shift in the past few years.

It is probably the next wave. Copyright 2014 MedCity News. By Stephanie Baum. HIT Thought Leader Highlight: Dr. Juergen Fritsch, M*Modal | Electronic Health Reporter. Jay Parkinson, The Doctor Is In (Well, Logged In) Michael Nagle for The New York Times Jay Parkinson, 37, chief executive and co-founder of Sherpaa, last month at the company’s headquarters in Dumbo, Brooklyn. But Dr. Parkinson’s start-up isn’t a new app or social network. He is a founder of Sherpaa, a Web site that operates like a virtual doctor’s office, examining patients by e-mail and text message.

“We’re using the Internet to reinvent health care,” Dr. Parkinson said proudly, seated next to a Ping-Pong table and a shaggy goldendoodle. Have a mysterious rash? This may seem like health care for the “OMG, I’m sick :( ” generation, but clients include high-tech players in New York like Tumblr, Skillshare, General Assembly and Hard Candy Shell.

In fact, Dr. In 2007, after graduating from Penn State College of Medicine, and completing a residency in pediatrics at St. Dr. “I knew I didn’t want to join a private practice,” he said. The concept seemed so trendy that Gawker mocked Dr. Dr. Dr. The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. House panel grills Mostashari on delay of widespread interoperability. Today in the third of three hearings held by subcommittees of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Farzad Mostashari, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology reassured a congressional panel that health IT interoperability will take some dramatic leaps forward within the next two years. Michael Burgess, MD (R-TX) vice-chairman of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, questioned the sluggishness of interoperability.

“We do hear about this a lot,” Burgess said. “Even anecdotally, hospital systems in the same city, that have the same operating system aren’t talking to each other.” “You’re the head, why don’t you fix that? ,” he asked Mostshari. “Why don’t you just make that happen?” “We are using every lever at our disposal to increase the sharing of information,” Mostashari answered. Over the course of the past three days, the GOP-led subcommittees continued to question FDA regarding potential taxes on healthcare apps. Prioritize workflow during HIT implementation. For providers asked to use new technologies like electronic health records and analytics tools, workflow impact, no doubt, is a top of mind issue. Transitioning away from familiar and comfortable practices and adopting new habits is one of the biggest obstacles an organization can face.

In a recent interview with the Institute for Heath Technology Transformation, Stephen Beck, chief medical informatics officer at Cincinnati-based Catholic Health Partners, said that's exactly how he approaches his organization's IT implementation processes. For instance, during Catholic's EHR implementation, Beck said he asked his employees to anticipate across-the-board changes--everything from physical movements to communications processes.

"Continual reinforcement of the new efficient workflows helps drive this change," he said. "A small change in habit, such as always using an admission order set, makes subsequent changes easier over time. " To learn more: - read the full iHT2 interview. ACOs Want Advanced Analytics, Data Warehousing, But Are They Ready? ACOs are gunning to acquire advanced analytics tools and data warehousing capabilities, according to a report in iHealthBeat. This conclusion comes from a new report from IDC Health Insights, which did a May 2012 survey of 40 hospitals and health insurance companies plus interviews with vendors and industry talking heads. As part of the survey, IDC asked about ACOs’ top investment priorities, and found 50 percent most want advanced analytics capabilities, while 46 percent cited data warehousing. The report also noted that ACO-involved entities are picking up analytics capabilities by acquiring infrastructure and software, as well as bringing informatics and data analysis experts on staff.

When asked what kind of information they’d like to review using analytics, they stated the following, according to iHealthBeat: And when asked what functions they’d put the analytics data to use on, they responded as follows, iHealthBeat said: Patient care coordination programs prevent readmissions, according to JAMA study. Medicare healthcare providers have managed to lower 30-day readmission rates and all-cause hospitalization within two years using several evidence-based quality improvement strategies, including care coordination, according to a new study.

In the study, published in the January 2013 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, clinicians in the participating government-supported programs “pumped up” the care coordination process in several ways. They coached patients to make them more actively involved in their own care; put in place a series of improvements in home care; and used a federal tool kit called INTERACT (Interventions to Reduce Acute Care Transfers) to help manage the status of nursing home residents and improve medication compliance.

[See also: HAI monitoring technology use lacking.] [See also: Intermountain takes on readmissions.] EHR Backlash, Patient Interaction, Smart Phone Use, and Dell Think Tank. CMS Launches Website, Experts Discuss Health IT at HIMSS Conference. During the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society's annual conference, CMS launched its eHealth website to provide information about federal health IT initiatives, Modern Healthcare reports (Daly, Modern Healthcare, 3/5). Details of the New Website The new website aims to serve as a central location for information about several health IT programs, such as the meaningful use program and the transition to ICD-10 code sets (Vaidya, Becker's Hospital Review, 3/4).

Under the 2009 federal economic stimulus package, health care providers who demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health record systems can qualify for Medicaid and Medicare incentive payments. U.S. health care organizations are working to transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10 code sets to accommodate codes for new diseases and procedures. Sequester's Effect on EHR Incentives Medicaid EHR incentive payments will not be affected by the sequester (Conn/Zigmond, Modern Healthcare, 3/5). The Nitro Primary Care Chronicle. Obama to Push Health Data Vendors to Share Records Widely. The Obama administration will push hospitals and software providers to share patient data in an effort to maximize the benefits of electronic records, the U.S. coordinator for health-information technology said. The administration is considering steps such as extending legal protections for physicians who share data and changing Medicare and Medicaid payments to encourage open access, said Farzad Mostashari, the top U.S. official on health technology.

The administration has set aside an estimated $27 billion to help doctors and hospitals buy electronic systems. The companies that build the systems have clashed over how to exchange information across their competing systems. Vendors, led by Epic Systems Corp. and Cerner Corp. “The competition is trending toward who can be the most interoperable,” Mostashari said today in an interview at the electronic medical records industry’s New Orleans conference. Industry Tensions The group didn’t include Epic, the industry leader. ‘Strong’ Intent. The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger (original narration by Randall)

Healthcare is NOT Ready for Innovation - HIT Consultant. I just left the healthcare industry for the second time and it’s sad the level of ignorance and superstition that exists around computers… and SQL especially. The entire industry treats computers like big electronic pieces of paper. They print things they can easily email, they manually enter in things they could easily write a form for, and they perform repetitive manual tasks they could easily script.

It’s pathetic how far behind the industry as a whole is and the people who work in it are so close-minded I don’t see how they ever get anything done. Part of the problem is the doctors. However, doctors aren’t the only problem. The biggest issue we had with staffing was that everyone who does the hiring thinks that you have to have hospital experience to be able to work in IT at a hospital. The industry itself has too many older managers in it and they need to bring in some fresh blood that actually knows something about IT and how to actually get things done. Here’s a scoop for you. 87% of Physicians Say Quantity of EHR Alerts ’Excessive’ Electronic health records systems are the latest source of information overload. Nearly one-third of physicians miss electronic notifications of test results in electronic health record systems, according to a research letter published this week in JAMA. Of the 2,590 primary care providers surveyed in the Department of Veterans Affairs by the researchers, 86.9% perceived the quantity of EHR alerts to be excessive, and 69.6% said they received more alerts than they could effectively manage.

More than half (55%) of surveyed physicians said current EHR systems made it possible to miss the alerts. "What stood out was information overload and the easier the systems were to use, you tended to miss [fewer] test results. " said Hardeep Singh, MD, MPH, the study's lead author, from the Houston VA Health Services Research and Development Center of Excellence. Scientists Uncover Invisible Motion in Video. Visiting the Doctor, Virtually. We’ve all wished at times that we could just chat with a doctor from our office, instead of taking time away from work to drive to the clinic. Now, a case study of medical care delivered online suggests that virtual visits can effectively treat some common ailments at a lower cost than in-person visits.

A report by the creators of the Virtuwell clinic, an online service started more than two years ago by the HealthPartners health care system in Minnesota that has handled roughly 40,000 cases, says that such visits were, on average, $88 less expensive than treatment provided in traditional settings. The visits also saved an estimated 2.5 hours, on average, of patients’ time. It’s important to note that the report, which appears in this month’s issue of the health policy journal Health Affairs, was written by executives of HealthPartners, including Patrick Courneya, a family doctor and medical director of HealthPartners Health Plan.

Would you use an online service like Virtuwell? Dilbert “Working” From Home. Standard Written Checklists Can Improve Patient Safety During Surgical Crises. Press Release Date: January 16, 2013 When doctors, nurses and other hospital operating room staff follow a written safety checklist to respond when a patient experiences cardiac arrest, severe allergic reaction, bleeding followed by an irregular heart beat or other crisis during surgery, they are nearly 75 percent less likely to miss a critical clinical step, according to a new study funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). While the use of checklists is rapidly becoming a standard of surgical care, the impact of using them during a surgical crisis has been largely untested, according to the study published in the January 17 online and print issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"We know that checklists work to improve safety during routine surgery," said AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D. Surgical crises are high-risk events that can be life threatening if clinical teams do not respond appropriately. Growing Pains As Doctors' Offices Adopt Electronic Records : Shots - Health News.

Hide captionPatient William Wishart, age 4 months, looks on as Dr. Melanie Walker uses a portable computer to enter information from his exam into an electronic medical records system, in North Raleigh, N.C., in November. Chris Seward/MCT /Landov Patient William Wishart, age 4 months, looks on as Dr. Melanie Walker uses a portable computer to enter information from his exam into an electronic medical records system, in North Raleigh, N.C., in November. Information technology has transformed much of the American economy, but its use in health care still lags, especially when it comes to electronic medical records.

Here's an example: The state of Colorado runs a computerized registry where any provider who gives a child a vaccine can report that information. But the state's computer system isn't compatible with most of the ones doctors use, so many practices don't update the central database because it's just too much extra data entry, says Dr. 9 ways future EHRs need to support ACOs. The (So Far) Failed Promise of Electronic Medical Records. Is Achieving ROI on EHRs a Reality or Fantasy? ONC and CMS Upcoming Events on HIE and Meaningful Use. How Does the Rise of Computers in Exam Rooms Impact Patient Care? New approach to health information exchange? ICD-101: How ICD-10 education can be fun. Electronic Health Record Safety. Despite Huge Investments in Electronic Health Records, Cost Savings Still Elusive.

Q&A: Understanding better documentation is the key to ICD-10 success. Electronic Health Records (EHR) News and Products for Health IT professionals and Healthcare employees – EHRIntelligence. 2012 ONC Annual Meeting. Looking to EHRs to automate quality reporting. The Keith W. Boone Daily. EHRs and Transcription: Can both live in harmony?

3 ways social media is transforming the doctor-patient relationship. ICD-101: Using ICD-10-CM to diagnose mental health. Happy New Year! EMR and HIPAA Stats Report. Doctors lean local in joining health information exchanges. The state of HIE as 2012 comes to a close. Five trends that did NOT shape ICD-10 development in 2012. Bridging the EHR Divide. Just because we have apps for smartphones doesn't mean we have real mobility in healthcare. As doctors flock to hospitals, bills spike for patients. Weekly Washington healthcare update. Report explains how doctors spend their time online. Unregulated health apps used as “standby stethoscopes” Meaningful Use Insights - Health Data Management Blogs Article.

45 Mind Blowing Digital Health Statistics and Trends. EMRs: The New Health Care Fraud Frontier? Infographic: Google's Flu Map Might Predict The Next Big Epidemic. Morning Headlines 12/03/12. Finding the Patient Story… Study: Mobile-Supported Diabetes Management Improves Outcomes. CMS awards up to $15B for data center. The best medicine for fixing the modern hospital. EHR interoperability: A necessary evil or an opportunity? | PhysBizTech. New Report Finds E-Prescribing Is on the Rise. How one hospital uses EHR data to track core measures. The Fiscal Cliff and Meaningful Use: Be Very Afraid - Health Data Management Blogs Article. The Healthcare IT Guy — Shahid's healthcare IT, EMR, EHR, PHR, medical content, and document managment advisory service. Enjoy. Help Set the Stage for Meaningful Use Stage 3. Decisions doctors must make to avoid Medicare penalties.

Us_tmt_fast500_rankings_111212. A Survey of Primary Care Doctors in Ten Countries Shows Progress in Use of Health Information Technology, Less in Other Areas. Beacons: Beaming EKG Results to Emergency Departments. Should Your Doctor Be Following You On Twitter? EHR market projected to grow 6.6% annually in Europe.

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8 Influential women in health IT. OIG official: 2013 work plan to focus on EHR-enabled fraud. Southeastern Minnesota Beacon Community: Improving Health Through Health Technology. HealthIT.hhs.gov: Home. Health IT | Health Technology | Healthcare IT News | Fierce Health IT.