Free EMR Newsletter Want to receive the latest news on EMR, Meaningful Use, ARRA and Healthcare IT sent straight to your email? Join thousands of healthcare pros who subscribe to EMR and EHR for FREE!

CHIME Seeks Year-Long Meaningful Use Stage 2 Extension

Recently, six senators wrote a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius criticizing the Meaningful  Use program.  The letter, which came with a white paper listing their concerns about federal health IT policy, questioned whether the $35 billion allocated to Meaningful Use was being spent effectively, especially given the fact that provider interoperability is still minimal.

This week, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) sent a letter to the six senators responding to their concerns, one which largely defends Meaningful Use though advocating for a one year extension of Stage 2.

In the letter, CHIME leaders concede that that there is some reason to be concerned with the current state of interoperability. However, they note, “we strongly believe that EHR incentive payments under the policy of Meaningful Use have been essential in moving the nation’s healthcare system into the 21st Century.”  The incentive payments providers are receiving are critical to the business plans and interoperability solutions they’re developing, CHIME says.

And while we may not have interoperable EMRs in place just yet, the MU program has helped make progress in that direction, they say. “The work accomplished through Meaningful Use to reach consensus on transport, vocabulary and content standards is foundational to advancing interoperability and exchange,” the letter argues.

All that being said, it would be a good idea to extend Stage 2 of Meaningful Use for another year before moving ahead with Stage 3, CHIME contends:

A year extension of Stage 2 will give providers the opportunity to optimize their EHR technology and achieve the benefits of Stage 1 and Stage 2; it will give vendors the time needed to prepare, develop and deliver needed technology to correspond with Stage 3; and it will give policymakers time to assess and evaluate programmatic trends needed to craft thoughtful Stage 3 rules.

Personally, I hope that HHS agrees to CHIME’s request and moves Stage 2 up a year. After all, the existing timelines aren’t holy writ, and if changing the deadline allows providers and vendors to consolidate their gains significantly, it’s probably worth the wait.

John’s working on an interview with CHIME to discuss their letter. Watch for that over on Hospital EMR and EHR.

Post a Comment(0)
May 8, 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: Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  EMR Adoption  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Meaningful Use
Tags:      

EMR and EHR Whitepapers

For a while I’ve been considering how the Healthcare Scene network of blogs can provide an EMR, EHR and healthcare IT whitepaper service. Over the many years I’ve been blogging about EMR and EHR, I’ve seen a lot of really valuable whitepapers created by the various EHR vendors. The time required to create a whitepaper is lengthy and for someone looking for an in depth look at a subject, a whitepaper is a nice option.

With that in mind I recently launched a new EMR, EHR and Healthcare IT whitepaper portal. We’re just getting started with the healthcare whitepaper portal, but we’ll be growing the content that’s available there over time. We’ll also be including a nice sidebar widget for those interested in the latest whitepapers we have to offer and we’ll embed a list of whitepapers in the email subscription as well.

We already have a number of great whitepapers available. For example, athenahealth created this whitepaper on Making the Switch: Replacing Your EHR for More Money and More Control. We’ve often talked about EMR switching becoming a very popular and important topic. This whitepaper helps a practice considering the EMR switch to go through an analysis of why to switch EMR or not.

Another whitepaper by NextGen is called The tips and tools to help you on the path to MU (Meaningful Use) and beyond. Considering less than 50% of providers have attested to meaningful use, this could be useful to many. It contains a lot of great resource links and some tips on how to approach meaningful use. If you’re looking at meaningful use stage 2, check out this one from AdvancedMD called Achieving Stage 2 Meaningful Use in Private Practice.

Those are just a few examples. You can find many more of them on this EMR and EHR whitepaper library page. I look forward to adding a lot more interesting whitepapers in the future. Hopefully you’ll find the content valuable.

Post a Comment(0)
April 23, 2013 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.

Filed Under: ARRA  EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare IT  Research
Tags:            

Will 2013 Be The Year Of EMR/Device Convergence? Nope.

Increasingly, healthcare organizations are introducing wireless medical devices which can hook up to EMRs.  And this makes a lot of sense, given that data from, say, infusion pumps offers a critical part of a patient’s overall picture and can boost safety as well.  On the other  hand, equipment and integration costs have held back hospitals from widespread convergence.

Given these opposing forces, it it looks like we’re poised at a point where adoption of wireless, EMR-connectible devices could gather momentum or stall out and drag into 2014 or beyond. But don’t get your hopes up for 2013. Here’s some trends that are likely to drag down the progress of medical device connectivity for the coming year:

* Device interoperability not required for Stage 2:  According to one blogger, William Hyman of Medical Connectivity, Stage 2 of Meaningful Use doesn’t directly doesn’t require providers to connect most traditional devices to the EMR. (Imaging and lab systems are exceptions, he notes.)  Well, if Stage 2 doesn’t require smart devices, must less connected ones, it’s hard to imgine CIOs making this a priority.

* FCC initiatives to benefit wireless medical device use aren’t mature yet:  The FCC is taking several steps to encourage the use of connected medical devices. These include promoting the use of medical body area networks (MBANs), for which it has reserved spectrum, as well as making frequencies available for medical micropower networks. The agency is also working on making it easier to experimentally license spectrum for wireless health test beds for wireless medical devices.  These initiatives are just getting rolling, however.

* Medical devicemakers face big EMR challenges:  As Medical Connectivity’s Tim Gee notes, creating device software that will smoothly pump data into an EMR is actually a pretty big challenge.  Devicemakers will need to export data in digital form, work with a central server aggregating data from your medical devices and translate you device data into HL7 for the EMR. Device vendors face big development expenses if they hope to get this right, he notes.

Will the wireless medical device become a standard part of hospital gear? I’d say it’s only a matter of time. But this year, progress is likely to be slow.

Post a Comment(0)
December 31, 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 Technology  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare IT Market  Hospitals  Meaningful Use  Medical Devices  mHealth
Tags:              

Hardest Meaningful Use Measure

There was a great piece a while back by Benjamin Harris that looked at the 5 not-so-easy pieces of meaningful use stage 2. In the article he suggests the following 5 challenges:

1. Structured Lab Results
2. Patient Access to Health Information
3. Ongoing Submission to Registries
4. Computerized Order Entry (CPOE)
5. Summary of Care Referrals

I started asking around my network to see what readers of my site and those in my social media groups thought was the hardest meaningful use measure for them. Some of them match the list above, but I thought I’d highlight a few of them I found interesting.

One person told me that the multi-lab scenario might be one of the most challenging parts of meaningful use and one that doesn’t get talked about much.

A CIO named Renee Davis told me that ePrescribing and monitoring compliance were the hardest meaningful use measures. I think the ePrescribing part can be a huge challenge depending on your EHR vendor, your physician users, and your location (ie. Do your local pharmacies participate?). Plus, any CIO will definitely have challenges with compliance.

Patty Houghton suggested that Clinical Summaries and Problem Lists were her hardest meaningful use challenges.

Obviously when you say the word “hardest” it’s something that’s unique to an individual practice or institution. With that disclaimer, from the large number of people I’ve talked to I think that most people consider the 60% CPOE meaningful use measure the hardest.

I still remember the day when I heard Marc Probst, CIO of Intermountain Healthcare (IHC), say that IHC was doing ) CPOE. This was when he was first working on the committees in Washington to create EHR certification and meaningful use requirements. It was a shock to me that IHC, who is touted for its use of IT in healthcare, could have 0 CPOE (I think Meaningful Use has helped encourage them to remedy this number). It illustrated well how much of a challenge CPOE will be for many institutions.

What’s your experience and the experience of the doctors and hospitals you work with? Which meaningful use measures are most challenging?

Post a Comment(4)
December 21, 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.

Filed Under: ARRA  EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare IT  Meaningful Use
Tags:                  

EHR Upcoding, Meaningful Use Stage 2, Interoperability, EHR Consolidation, and ACOs Video – Burning Topics with Dr. Nick

I recently sat down with Dr. Nick van Terheyden, CMIO of Nuance to talk about some of the Burning Health IT topics. In the following video Dr. Nick and I talk about EHR Upcoding, Meaningful Use Stage 2, Interoperability, EHR Consolidation, and ACOs. Enjoy and I hope you’ll extend our conversation in the comments.

Post a Comment(1)
October 24, 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.

Filed Under: ACO  ARRA  EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  EMR and EHR Videos  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare IT Videos  Meaningful Use
Tags:                    

Healthcare Social Media, Call for Halt on MU Payments, and Healthbox London – Around Healthcare Scene

EMR, EHR and HIPAA

Mobile EHR as a Solution for EHR Downtime

There has been some EHR downtime recently from major EHR vendors, which has given an opportunity for mobile EHRs to get more of a spotlight. Mitochin recently released a Mobile EHR, and John had the opportunity to review it. It has some different features than other mobile EHRs that are available, and appears to be a great alternative for accessing EHRs when downtime happens.

Healthcare Social Media Happenings

There’s lots of ways to “be in the know” with healthcare and social media. This post directs interested readers to different ways to get involved recently, including attending weekly #HITsm chats, following the happenings at the New York Digital Health Conference, and more.

Hospital EMR and EHR

Congressmen Want Halt on Meaningful Use Payments

Four congressmen are rallying against current Meaningful Use Stage 2 regulations, and half payments for MU. HIMSS has released a statement against this, and there is a lot of debate about what to do. Some of their complaints are warranted and should be taken seriously, it isn’t completely clear cut what the solution should be.

EMR and EHR Thoughts

Healthbox Expands to European Startups

Healthbox has been helping startups in the United States by providing them with seed capital and access to resources. The company is now expanding to Europe, specifically London. Startups have been able to submit applications since July and a decision on which startups that were selected was expected in September.

Smart Phone Health Care

My First (Actual) Experience With A Patient Portal

Medical practices all over the country are implementing patient portals. The pediatrician’s office that Katie takes her son to just created one, and in this post, she talks about her first look at it. What parts of your patient portal do you like?

Post a Comment(0)
October 14, 2012 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  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare IT Market  Meaningful Use  mHealth
Tags:                      

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.

Post a Comment(0)
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
Tags:                

Meaningful EHR Use, Meaningful Use Stage 2, and Robotic Glove – Around HealthCare Scene

EMR and HIPAA

Meaningful Use Stage 2 Final Rule: What You Need to Know—At Least For Now

This is a great summary of meaningful use stage 2. It’s a real practical look at what you should expect from meaningful use stage 2.

A Smart Approach to Medicine and Social Media

Dealing with patients via the Internet and social media may seem daunting. When should it be done, and what limits should be maintained? Katherine Rourke takes ideas from an article about handling social media communication with patients, written by Dr. Vartabedian, and contributes her thoughts as well.

10 Ways to Meaningful EHR Use for Doctors

With the frustration that sometimes comes with implementing an EHR, some doctors may just want to give up. However, beyond that initial frustration, it can be very helpful is the creators keep a few things in mind. This post contains a list of 10 ways developers can do this, created by Rob Lamberts, MD. It includes ideas like allowing e-prescription for all controlled drugs, and requiring all visits to have a simple summary.

ACOs

A number of really interesting ACO stats. Plus, there’s a great look at who will be driving the ACO. Will it be the payers, physicians or hospitals? This is a challenging question and the battle between the various stakeholders is on.

Hospital EMR and EHR

Hospitals Adjusting to Meaningful Use Stage 2 Rules

With all the complaints that came with MU Stage 1, there was bound to be many with the release of MU Stage 2 rules. Unfortunately, it is something that cannot really be avoided, just adjusted to. The HIE requirements do, surprisingly, seem to be light. Anne Zieger talks about how hospitals are adjusting, and some thoughts on the recently released rules.

Smart Phone Health Care

Robotic Glove That Diagnoses Illnesses: Coming To A Doctor’s Office Near You – #HITsm Chat Discovery

A new invention may create less visits to the doctor’s office. Created by two engineers and a med student at Harvard, the robotic glove supposedly can detect many different illnesses, such as breast cancer or enlarged lymph nodes. It has not been released yet, but it hopefully will eventually reach it’s way to consumers.

Laser Developed to Detect a Person’s Vegetable Intake – #HITsm Chat Discovery

It won’t be hard for doctors to detect a person’s diet soon. A laser has been developed which measures the level of carotenoids present in a person body. The fiber optic probe is placed on a person’s hand, and within seconds, and accurate reading is available. There are many possibilities that arise with this invention – to aiding in studies, to determining whether a person’s diet is contributing to their health problems.

Post a Comment(0)
September 2, 2012 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  EMR Adoption  EMR Technology  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare IT Market  Healthcare Social Media  HIE  Hospitals  Meaningful Use  mHealth  Outcomes
Tags:                  

Meaningful Use Stage 2, Reduced Patient Engagement, #HITsm Role in Creating Communities – #HITsm Chat Highlights

Every week, HL7 Standards, hosts a #HITsm Tweet Chat and poses four questions “on current topics that are influencing healthcare technology, health IT, and the use of social media in healthcare.” It’s always a great discussion and also a great chance to meet a wide variety of people that are passionate about healthcare IT.

In case you missed it, or are curious about what went on this week, we’ve put together the list of topics with some of the best responses for each topic. There were some interesting topics this week, as well as some great responses. If you have any opinions on any of these topics, feel free to continue the discussion in the comments. This chats take place every Friday at 11AM CST. You’ll find members of Healthcare Scene regularly participating in the chat under some of the following Twitter accounts: @techguy, @ehrandhit, @hospitalEHR, and @smyrnagirl.

Topic One: What are your general thoughts on the final rules for Meaningful Use Stage 2? Positives? Negatives? 

 

 

 

Topic Two: Is the 5% reduced patient engagement threshold more a reflection of what is achievable or a cave to outside pressure?

 

 

 

Topic Three: What has prevented widespread adoption of coordinated care? Are the barriers technology, process, or people? 

 

 

 

Topic Four: What role does #HITsm play in creating communities to create skills that improve health before illness occurs? a la, #Salutogenesis

 

Post a Comment(0)
September 1, 2012 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  EMR Adoption  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare IT Market  Hospitals  Meaningful Use  mHealth  Outcomes
Tags:                          

Multiple Patient Portal Logins

A long time reader, first time e-mailer recently emailed me some really interesting questions and comments about meaningful use. One thing that they pointed out in that email is the issue of multiple patient portal logins. It was a good point that I think is worth discussing.

When you look at the market for patient portals, you quickly realize that at least in the current environment we’re not going to get close to having one patient portal for all the doctors. Think about an elderly patient that goes to 5 different doctors. This would likely mean that this one patient will have 5 different patient portal logins. That’s a lot of logins just to manage your healthcare. Not to mention, you have to learn 5 different portals. Some you can schedule an appointment online. Some you can pay online. Others you can get refills. Others you can’t. Yep, it’s going to get really confusing really fast.

I’m sure many reading this are thinking, we’re already juggling multiple logins in our life so why does it matter if we have a few more. While annoying, I actually agree with this statement for the younger generation. I probably have a few hundred logins that I use regularly (I’m probably at the high end) and I’m able to manage without too much trouble. In fact, lately I’ve learned how to reset my password quickly on those that I’ve forgotten and/or don’t use regularly. It’s rarely been an issue for me.

However, remember that many of those that are patients aren’t part of this younger, tech savvy generation. I think about my mom and the fear she has of trying something new on the computer. If she’s never done it before, she’s literally afraid to screw something up. As much as we try to convince her otherwise, you can sense the fear and trepidation she has when she’s never used a website before. I should also add, that my mother isn’t even that old. I think you can see the challenge that these patient portals are going to face with the not so tech savvy patient population (which is the majority of the patient population).

I think most of us agree that the meaningful use stage 2 measure that requires patients to interact with the patient portal is going to be taken out or modified. Everyone I’ve talked to agrees that it would be a huge mistake for ONC to hinge meaningful use dollars on something the physician doesn’t control: patient actions. I expect and hope that it will be modified appropriately.

With that said, I still think there will be a push by ONC towards patient portals. The idea of one login per doctor has me a little concerned. I wonder if more patient portals shouldn’t start more fully embracing Facebook logins or other unified logins like OpenID for their portals. Although, I’m sure many of the patients don’t have Facebook logins either so that won’t solve all the problems.

Am I overstating the challenge? Is there a solution out there? Am I wrong about their being so many portals that patients will have to log into? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Post a Comment(2)
June 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.

Filed Under: EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare IT  Meaningful Use  PHR
Tags:      




    • Next