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Health Data Hacking, Population Health Help, and Childhood Obesity — Around Healthcare Scene

EMR and HIPAA

Health Data Hacking Likely To Increase

One aspect of EMRs and medical technology many people — physicians and patients alike — are nervous about, are security breeches. Unfortunately, it seems as if this fear is justified, and will continue to be for the time being. Redspin, an IT security firm, gathered data about security and data incidents since 2009, and it has only increased since then. Some of the other findings are rather frightening as well.

Can The Benefits of Hospitals Acquiring Practices Be Achieved By Other Means?

There is a current trend of hospitals acquiring practices. Is there any way for groups of physicians to achieve these results other ways? This post goes into the details of this situation, and different loopholes involved.

Hospital EMR and EHR

Mostashari Asks EHR Vendors to Do What’s “Moral and Right”

Farzad Mostashari, ONC National Coordinator, recently made comments at the Health IT Policy Committee. He didn’t cut any corners when it came to talking about what he is seeing in the EMR world, and encouraged EHR vendors to do the moral and right thing. This post highlights some of his statements.

ACOs Need Population Health Help From EMRs

EMRs, in large part, don’t assist with ACOs and population health help. This is unfortunate, because they definitely need the help. In the future, EMR vendors need to be aware of this, and tweek their EMRs to offer tools to help.

Meaningful Health IT News

My HIMSS Will Be All About Quality And Patient Safety

Because of his experiences in 2012, Neil Versel has a new focus for 2013. He is now dedicated to “bringing news about efforts to improve patient safety and reduce medical errors.” Read this post for more about his goals, and how you can get involved.

Smart Phone HC

Health IT Positively Affects Childhood Obesity

Childhood obesity is on the rise, and the big question is — how can we prevent it? While many experts may be quick to weigh in on the situation, a recent study published in Pediatrics has suggested that Health IT may prove to have a positive affect on the problem. There are many companies and websites working to create ways for children to get involved and proactive about their health, and this post highlights a few of them.

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February 17, 2013 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Market  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Health IT Jobs  Healthcare
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ONC Encourages Emergence Of E-Patients

Throughout the Meaningful Use rollout, there’s been discussion of how to best use all of these new health IT toys to get patients more engaged in their care.  But as far as I know, the following is the first time ONC has officially launched an initiative to cultivate the emergence of health IT-smart e-patients.

In a new article in Health Affairs, ONC national coordinator for  health IT Farzad Mostashari has shared plans to use health IT to reach patients and encourage their involvement with their care. The ONC is already working with 17 Beacon communities to test ideas such as text-messaging for diabetes risk assessment, but the idea now is to expand things to much higher level.

ONC now hopes to encourage patients to participate in e-patient activities such as secure e-mail messaging with doctors, use of EMRs that patients can add to and transmit, as well as use of mobile health apps for chronic disease monitoring and wellness promotion, reports Politico.com.

I’m excited to see ONC jump on this bandwagon enthusiastically. While there is an e-patient movement afoot, and a growing list of doctors interested in “participatory medicine,” it’s unlikely that the run-of-the-mill patient with few self-advocacy or technical skills would get involved on their own.

And the truth is, if ONC truly wants to build a nation of engaged patients, Meaningful Use requirements are too modest by far. Sure, there’s new requirements afoot that will make it easier for patients to e-mail doctors and transmit their health information, and that’s fine. But the truth is that few patients will take advantage of these features without a great degree of encouragement.

As something of an e-patient myself, I’m eager to see the movement blossom, as I believe it’s good for both the clinician and ordinary citizens receiving medical care. Let’s see how much effort Dr. Mostashari and his team put into cultivating patient engagement.

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February 15, 2013 I Written By

Anne Zieger is veteran healthcare consultant and analyst with 20 years of industry experience. Zieger formerly served as editor-in-chief of FierceHealthcare.com and her commentaries have appeared in dozens of international business publications, including Forbes, Business Week and Information Week. She has also contributed content to hundreds of healthcare and health IT organizations, including several Fortune 500 companies.

Filed Under: EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  EMR Adoption  Healthcare IT  Hospitals  mHealth
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Blue Button Initiative Picking Up Speed

The idea of the “Blue Button” has been gradually filtering into the consciousness of EMR proponents for a while now. As readers may know, the concept comes from the VA, where the idea has been to offer a single-click “blue button” allowing patients to get their VA treatment data into the hands of civilians healthcare providers.

Lately, a next gen approach known as the Automated Blue Button Initiative (ABBI) has come into focus as the right way to bring the Blue Button to the healthcare world at large. Given the energy behind ABBI, and the profile of the people involved, my guess is that it will catch fire quickly.

GE Health Standards Architect and ABBI member Keith Boone told an audience at HealthCamp Boston, where Blue Button was a very hot topic, that the button will evolve from a flat ASCII text download to more flexible formats such as XML, according to SearchHealthIT.com.

Along these lines, I was interested to note that as ONC head Farzad Mostashari sees it, the ultimate goal for the Blue Button is to give patients more control. “The killer enabler is actually patient online View-Download-Transmit, esp with #ABBI.” he tweeted this week.

The ONC’s Standards & Interoperability Framework community, meanwhile, is working on standards and tools to push personal data to a specific location. These include using Direct secure messaging protocols and Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture, according to Douglas Fridsma, MD, director of ONC’s Office of Standards and Interoperability, who spoke with Healthcare IT News.

The standards and  specs will allow patients to both download health information to their computer and route data from their provider to PHRs, e-mail accounts or other preferred applications.

All told, it looks like a key set of Meaningful Use Stage 2 required technologies are coming right along. Will patients actually use them? Hard to say, as we haven’t exactly seen a huge groundswell of PHR love or demand for EMR access to date. But progress toward making sharing possible never hurts.

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October 1, 2012 I Written By

Anne Zieger is veteran healthcare consultant and analyst with 20 years of industry experience. Zieger formerly served as editor-in-chief of FierceHealthcare.com and her commentaries have appeared in dozens of international business publications, including Forbes, Business Week and Information Week. She has also contributed content to hundreds of healthcare and health IT organizations, including several Fortune 500 companies.

Filed Under: EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  EMR Adoption  EMR Technology  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Meaningful Use
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Farzhad Uses Twitter to Call Out EHR Vendors

When it comes to ONC, I think a few things have always been clear:
1. ONC has its heart in the right place.
2. ONC hates the government restrictions that have to work within as much as the rest of us.

If you’ve ever had a chance to meet with someone from ONC in person, then you know the first item to be true. They really do have a sincere desire to improve healthcare in America through the implementation of IT. Not only do you see that in person, but their actions compliment this as well. In fact, I’d say that they’re some of the most sincere parts of Washington DC that I’ve ever met.

The challenge comes with the second point. ONC has to work within the legislation and government regulations that they’re given. I once posted about Blumenthal’s HIMSS adress as being meaningless. Someone at ONC found it and asked what they could do to make his address more meaningful. I told them nothing, because he was subject to the government muzzle. I think they’re reply was something like, “Many of us here don’t like the government muzzle either.” Another simple example of how they are very sincere people at ONC. I wonder if Blumenthal could offer a non-muzzled speech now.

I say all of this as background for a tweet that Farzad Mostashari sent out to EHR vendors. The thing I love most about this tweet is that Farzad is using the farthest extent of his power possible to push forward health IT within the government framework. This is no easy task, but I think Farzad’s tweet is brilliant:

I think the ONC pledge is still being considered by many EHR vendors. I know how EHR companies make decisions and so this won’t be any different. However, Farzad already posted this tweet with EHR companies that have made the pledge:

I’ve also seen tweets from NextGen and Azzly. We’ll see if others pop up on the #ONCPledge hashtag.

Oh the power of a tweet! Can you imagine how simple, but powerful Farzad’s request could be? No complicated legislation. No expensive stimulus. No mind numbing regulation. Just good old fashioned public pledge to do what’s right. I wonder how else this could be used.

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September 12, 2012 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and Google Plus.

Filed Under: EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare IT  Healthcare Social Media
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EMR Device Connectivity, RECs, and Meaningful Use Resources

Time again to take a quick look around the twittersphere to see the various discussions happening around EMR and EHR. I should take a poll and see how many of my readers are on Twitter and how many haven’t yet found the beauty that is Twitter.


I agree that device connectivity and integration is going to be very important as we move towards EHR. In fact, I don’t think that integration is getting enough focus and emphasis in hospitals. I think we need to see more of that or we’re going to run into troubles and miss out on some great opportunities.


This tweet is actually pretty obvious. You can basically only work with a REC if you’re going to go after meaningful use. Are there any RECs that will work with you if you’re not planning to pursue meaningful use? I’m still skeptical that many RECs have provided a good return on the money they’ve received.


This really is a nice resource that Farzad points out. However the thing that stuck out to me was the objectives of meaningful use:
1. Improve Quality, Safety, Efficiency
2. Engage Patients & Families
3. Improve Care Coordination
4. Improve Public and Population Health
5. Ensure Privacy and Security for Personal Health Information

Do you think that meaningful use is meeting these objectives?

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July 29, 2012 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and Google Plus.

Filed Under: ARRA  EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare IT  Meaningful Use
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What Meaningful Outcomes Will Come from Meaningful Use?

I recently came across this video (embedded below) of Farzad Mostashari doing an Ignite talk about meaningful use and the EHR incentive money. If you’ve never been to an Ignite event they can be really cool (see some of the videos here). I love the format of them: “At the events Ignite presenters share their personal and professional passions, using 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds for a total of just five minutes.” Would be cool to do an Ignite at HIMSS or something. but I digress.

In Farzad’s Ignite presentation he says that meaningful use and the HITECH act will lead to improved outcomes, higher quality care, safer healthcare, patient centered care, and coordinated care. When you hear him talk, he’s quite confident that all of these are going to happen and I really think he’s genuine in this being the goal.

Before I bias you too much on my views, I’d love to hear your thoughts on if the HITECH act and meaningful use will achieve the valuable goals of: improved outcomes, higher quality care, safer healthcare, patient centered care, and coordinated care

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June 20, 2012 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and Google Plus.

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Business Intelligence Gets a Boost from popHealth and the MAeHC

I’ve been inundated with two things as of late – HIMSS12 planning and all things business intelligence. I’ve spent the last few weeks helping prepare the Porter Research team for a webinar on providers’ perceptions of business intelligence, which I’m sure will be a big theme at HIMSS. As I’ve been looking over data from the latest Porter Research survey on BI, I’ve realized that providers know they need it but many aren’t quite sure how to define it, what they need out of it, how to implement it, or how to go about making it meaningful for their organization’s particular needs. And vendors in the healthcare space seem to be (or so I thought) just getting into the game of developing these sorts of tools – be they on a departmental or enterprise level.

Micky Tripathi, President and CEO of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative (MAeHC) – a nonprofit healthcare IT advisory and consultancy firm – alerted me to an interesting business intelligence tool called popHealth during my recent interview with him for a Porter Research feature on that state’s developing health information exchange. The MAeHC team, which includes among its services the MAeHC Quality Data Center, will be part of the Interoperability Showcase at HIMSS12, and will help to highlight the functionality and accuracy of the popHealth tool.

“popHealth was originally created as an open-source quality measurement tool by the Primary Care Information Project in New York City,” explained Tripathi, “which was headed at the time by Dr. Farzad Mostashari. Now that he’s the national coordinator for health IT, he’s been promoting it at a national level as a free, open-source tool that any organization in the country can use to send their clinical data to and get Meaningful Use clinical quality measures out of.”

Since then, the ONC has contracted with the Mitre Corporation to further develop the platform for a national user base.

You can of course check out the popHealth website for more info, but in a nutshell, the tool is “an open source reference implementation software service that automates the reporting of Meaningful Use quality measures. popHealth integrates with a healthcare provider’s electronic health record (EHR) system using continuity of care records. popHealth streamlines the automated generation of summary quality measure reports on the provider’s patient population.

“popHealth supports healthcare providers and EHR vendors by reporting clinical quality measures from electronic health record continuity of care files. Providers are empowered to better understand, and analyze the health of their patient population, and meet Meaningful Use reporting objectives, through reports of clinical quality measures. EHR vendors and healthcare providers are free to download, use, and integrate the popHealth software in their systems.”

The popHealth team will at HIMSS also to announce the winner of their tool development challenge. Announced last fall, the competition challenges participants to “develop an application that leverages the popHealth open source framework, existing functionality, standards and sample datasets to improve patient care and provide greater insight into patient populations.”

As the need for business intelligence tools and demand for open source solutions grow, I’ll be interested to see if popHealth ushers in a new era of reporting – one that everyone can take advantage of thanks to its non-existent price tag.

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February 9, 2012 I Written By

As Social Marketing Director at Billian, Jennifer Dennard is responsible for the continuing development and implementation of the company’s social media strategies for its three key properties – Billian’s HealthDATA, Porter Research and HITR.com. She is a regular contributor to a number of healthcare blogs, and currently manages the Technology Association of Georgia Health Society’s social media channels. You can find her on Twitter @SmyrnaGirl.

Filed Under: EHR  Electronic Health Record  EMR  Healthcare Business Intelligence  Healthcare IT  Meaningful Use  Outcomes
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Simple and Effective EMRs will Solve So Many Problems

I just read Ryan Rick’s guest post on Phoenix, Arizona EHR Uninstalls and I remembered a New York City Health Department’s project called Primary Care Information Project (PCIP) headed by Dr. Farzad Mostashari. I see big problems for Dr. Mostashari’s project. I predict many uninstalls and ultimately a low successful implementation rate. They have good intentions but are making classic mistakes which will ultimately prove to be their undoing. I hope what they are doing will work (because I am a big fan of EMRs), but let me outline a couple of critical weaknesses in their plan and then we will see how things work out for them over time. I think all “top down” EMR implementation organizations will take note of this experiment.

I think Dr. Mostashari has bought into the notion that implementation has to be daunting and hard. “Our experience here is that it’s just hard,“ Dr. Mostarshari said. He thinks like Dr. Middleton, “A crucial bridge to success, according to experts, will be how local organizations help doctors in small offices adopt and use electronic records. The new legislation calls for creation of “regional health IT extension centers”. In a letter to the White House and Congress last month, Dr. Blackford Middleton, chairman of the Center for Information Technology Leadership, a research arm of Partners Healthcare in Boston, and 50 other experts emphasized the importance of these centers and pointed to the Primary Care Information Project in New York City as a model.” — Steve Lohr, How to Make Electronic Medical Records a Reality, New York Times, March 1, 2009.

Implementation is daunting and hard if you pick systems which are NOT simple, NOT easy to install, NOT easy to learn, and NOT easy to use. PCIP in New York City is using eClinicalWorks which has a good reputation, but I am NOT sure it is simple, easy to install, easy to learn and easy to use. If eClinicalWorks had all the “simple and easy” characteristics, then I don’t see why the implementation would be so difficult and daunting.

Dr. Mostarshari is also moving very aggressively and fast. Not a good idea in my opinion! He is rolling things out to the whole system before seeing what works and what does not work. “The city Health Department’s Primary Care Information Project (PCIP) has already converted over 1,300 physicians and 226 medical practices to EHRs”. Record Recovery, Center for an Urban Future, page 5, June 2009. www.nycfuture.org. I think the project is only a couple years old.

Ryan Ricks, of XLEMR, makes a series of suggestions in his post which I believe are extremely important. “It seems that Arizona physicians are scrambing to remove unusable systems due to poor selection or botched implementations.”. “Physicians need to be careful and not rush into a decision they may regret.”. “Physicians should focus on their needs … and select the simplest system that fulfills their requirements”. “Simple systems are easy to install, easy to learn, and easy to use.” “Ease of use is critical; complex and difficult systems can lead to spiraling maintenance and training costs, and may ultimately be discarded”. “They should take their time to find a simple, user friendly system that meets their needs.” — Ryan Ricks, XLEMR Update Newsletter, July 2009, www.xlemr.com. Mr. Ricks makes some excellent points. Water flows downhill very nicely, but it takes a lot of energy to pump it to the top of the mountain!

It is my feeling that implementations would be less daunting and more successful if the EMR systems were less complex, easier to install, easier to use and easier to learn. Doctors are smart people who can learn to do stuff without handholding and constant supervision and oversight. The fact that the New York City PCIP Project needs all this hard work and all this effort and all this money makes me suspect that they have made major mistake in choosing an EMR system that is too complex, too hard to learn and too hard to use. Their second mistake is moving very rapidly to roll it out to the whole system before removing the bugs (the bug may be eClinicalWorks).

This top down approach is doomed to fail. Doctors must be able to choose the systems which works for them. If you have to ram it down our throats, it will be regurgitated at some point when we just get fed up. This happened in Pheonix Arizona, is going to happen in New York City and, if we are not careful, may happen in the whole country if things are not managed in a smarter manner. This is also a warning to Hospital Systems which are working in a similar “top down” manner to provide EMRs to their employed physicians and their private physicians (via the 85% rebate model). We don’t need Regional Health IT Extension Centers and we don’t need large organizations forcing us to use THEIR preferred EMR. We need to be using EMRs which are easy to install, easy to use and easy to learn! We need to identify those EMRs and promote them aggressively.

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August 6, 2009 I Written By

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