BEI HIT Blog
EHR Watch, May 4, 2012
BEI Commentary: EHRs have come a long way from their beginnings a few decades ago. They still have a ways to go yet. It is encouraging to read about how they need to improve and what is being done about it. Here is an article that identifies a Clinical Decision Support capability that could help reduce cost and improve quality of care by properly managing problem lists. The article is based on a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
From improving population health to making our healthcare system more efficient, a lot is expected from the system-wide implementation of EHRs.
But at least one recent study suggests EHRs could use some improvements in order to live up to those expectations.
Published in January in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, the study examined the accuracy of EHRs when it comes to providing accurate clinical problem lists. Read More
HITECH Answers, Apri 24, 2012
BEI Commentary: Health Information Exchange will be very important in the near future. Here is a good description of how to think about HIE.
While the health information exchange (noun) market continues to develop, providers’ needs for health information exchange (the verb) becomes ever more pervasive and urgent. A dialogue has emerged recently that has separated the HIE market into public and private. However, the way HIE needs to be viewed is through the eyes of the provider and patient – both of whom are at the core of a series of concentric circles, and whom generate data during a visit or an episode of care.
These circles represent various geographic layers indicative of society’s organizational frameworks. The data must flow for multiple purposes at various levels, but the point is it starts from the center of the circle (patients and providers in geographic proximity) and moves to the local, state and national levels. Read More
Government HealthIT, April 20, 2012
BEI Commentary: Here are the current statistics on the number of physicians registered for Meaningful Use and collecting incentive payments.
The Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record program has paid $4.5 billion to 76,612 physicians and hospitals in incentive payments through March 2012.
Of that amount, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services paid out $339.9 million for Medicare eligible providers, according to its latest data.
Fewer Medicare physicians attested and received payments in March than the previous month because the end of February was the cut-off date to be considered part of calendar 2011. However, the 8,651 physicians in March was an increase over January’s 7,668 doctors who received incentives. In February, 12,356 Medicare physicians obtained their payments. The number of hospitals that collected Medicare incentives, however, continued to increase in March to 115 from 84 in February. Read More
Health Data Management, April 17, 2012
BEI Commentary: For those of you who think that the HIPAA police are only after hospitals and payers, think again. This article states that an Arizona based cardiology practice was fined $100,000 for sloppy HIPAA practices related to their IT infrastructure.
Phoenix Cardiac Surgery, P.C, with offices in Phoenix and Prescott, Ariz., will pay a $100,000 fine and implement a corrective action plan under a resolution agreement with the HHS Office for Civil Rights following HIPAA privacy and security rule violations.
OCR began an investigation after learning that the physician practice was posting clinical and surgical appointments on an Internet-based calendar that was publicly accessible, according to an April 17 announcement from the agency. The investigation found that the practice had few policies and procedures to comply with the privacy and security rules.
“This case is significant because it highlights a multi-year, continuing failure on the part of this provider to comply with the requirements of the Privacy and Security Rules,” OCR Director Leon Rodriguez said in the announcement. Read More
New York Times, April 11, 2012
BEI Commentary: This represents just a smattering of what is going on in the HIT arena. There are hundreds of companies like these out there. Expect to see all kinds of changes in healthcare of the next several years.
If ever an industry were ready for disruption, it is the American health care industry. Americans spend about $7,600 a year per person on health care, one in two adults lives with a chronic disease and the average wait time to see a doctor in a metropolitan area is 20 days. Entrepreneurs have responded by starting health care technology companies that are changing the way we interact with the entire system.
They are also responding to an evolving model of health care, which will ultimately be focused more on outcomes than on services, and to the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Records Incentive Program, which, in an effort to improve the coordination of care, gives providers financial incentives to adopt electronic health records and report how they use them. “We are about to see a fundamental transformation in the way care is delivered and the way patients are engaged with that care,” said Frank Moss, head of the New Media Medicine Group at the M.I.T. Media Lab. Here is a sampling of the innovative companies pushing that transformation: Read More
Healthcare IT News, April 10, 2012
BEI Commentary: The big takeaway here is this health systems commitment to interoperability for its images. This is the theme of Stage 2 Meaningful Use, and we will see many more implementations of this type in the future.
For policymakers, the goal is the NHIN, the National Health Information Network that will enable healthcare providers to share patient information anywhere across the country.
While that goal is still a few years away, to put it mildly, it’s possible to get a sense of the implications of that breadth of connectivity when the switch gets thrown on a significantly smaller network, for just one type of information, at the local or regional level. Read More
Chicago Tribune, March 29, 2012
BEI Commentary: Many of you have read about the recent recommendations regarding unnecessary tests and images. On that same topic, there is a related question as to whether or not EHRs can help reduce the number of tests ordered on the theory that more information is available to the provider at the point of care. According to this article, the answer is yes, but with an asterisk. The asterisk is that the EHR needs to be connected to an exchange (which is one of the major themes of Meaningful Use Stage 2), in order to see the benefit.
Doctors order fewer lab tests when they have access to a patient’s electronic medical records, according to a new study, but the efficiency may be confined to state-of-the-art records exchanges for now.
The new study is based on the experience of two hospitals — Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General — that form Partners HealthCare, a not-for-profit healthcare system in Boston. The findings are at odds with another recent study. Read More
9 News Now, March 27, 2012
BEI Commentary: This is a local HIPAA violation. The laptop was not encrypted and was lost. Therefore, by HIPAA rules, it had to be disclosed to local media. The reality is, that if any laptop is lost and is not encrypted, you will probably have to make a disclosure to local media. While this does not cost you any hard dollars, certainly no one needs the bad publicity associated with this. Make sure you encrypt your laptops!
Howard University Hospital this week sent notification to patients of a potential disclosure of their protected health information in late January. A former contractor’s personal laptop containing patient information was stolen, according to a statement by the hospital.
The laptop, taken from the former contractor’s vehicle, was password protected.
No evidence suggests that any of the patients’ files have been accessed. The former contractor downloaded the files to a personal laptop in violation of Howard University Hospital policy and federal health care rules. Read More
New York Times, March 9, 2012
BEI Commentary: Online reviews is a complicated subject that physicians are starting to grapple with. One thing is for sure: online reviews will become more and more part of the healthcare landscape and a workable system needs to be developed that is fair to doctors and usable for patients.
For all the debate about which Web sites have the best model for reliable reviews — paid or unpaid, anonymous or real name, Angie’s List or Yelp or TripAdvisor — one thing is certain: a robust ecosystem exists online for restaurant and hotel reviews that has changed those industries for the better.
So it is puzzling that there is no such authoritative collection of reviews for physicians, the highest-stakes choice of service provider that most people make. Read More
Everything HITECH, March 5 2012
BEI Commentary: Here is some useful information on the audits that will be performed related to Meaningful Use. As we recommend, this article states that good, hard copy documentation of your Meaningful Use attestation will be very important in the event of an audit.
While at HIMSS 2012, we attended a presentation by CMS outlining their program for auditing providers under the EHR Stimulus payment, and were fortunate to be able to talk with a couple of the auditors one on one after the session. Their approach is still being finalized, and won’t roll out until later this spring, but there was enough useful information, that we thought to share for your own planning activities.
It is important to note that there are two distinct progreams, one for Medicaid (centered on eligibility and AIU) and another for Medicare (centered on Meaningful Use Measures and Objectives). Read More
