Note: Each link is followed by a title and few paragraphs. For the full article click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links may require site registration or subscription payment.
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CVS joins forces with hospitals, docs
Posted on Sep 26, 2014
By Kaiser Health News
By Shefali Luthra, KHN Staff Writer
Neglected to pick up your prescription? Now, there’s a good chance your doctor will know and do something about it, thanks to a slew of new partnerships between CVS Health and various health systems. One of the most recent, which is slated to begin by early next year, will integrate the electronic medical records from MedStar Health’s 10 hospitals and 4,000 doctors – located in Washington, D.C. and Maryland -- with CVS pharmacies as well as the chain’s 900 Minute Clinics located across the country.
It makes coordination easier, said Bob Gilbert, MedStar’s president of ambulatory services. When someone gets care at a pharmacy or retail clinic, it will be entered in the patient’s MedStar records for the doctor to see. If a MedStar patient receives CVS service in another state, practitioners there will still be able to see the patient’s records.
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HITRUST issues alert on operating system vulnerability
September 25, 2014 | By Katie Dvorak
An alert has been issued by HITRUST C3 that a vulnerability--Shellshock--has been discovered in Unix- and Linux-based operating systems, as well as Apple Macs OS X, that could put them at risk to being attacked; and the organization is asking that healthcare organizations take steps to safeguard their systems from the threat.
The vulnerability was discovered on Wednesday in Bash, a shell for evaluating and executing commands from other programs within a OS, according to HITRUST's alert. The vulnerability happens when Bash is starting up; and it could allow a hacker to create a malicious code that would allow them to gain control of a compromised server.
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Tech giants move to protect wearables
Technology giants poised to reap billions from selling “wearables” and other personal health technology are furiously lobbying Capitol Hill with a strong message: Don’t regulate our Fitbits.
The Affordable Care Act calls for patients to become bigger players in their own health, and companies that make personal health devices want Medicare to incentivize doctors who encourage patients to use them.
As the market for the devices grows, however, the companies that make them and collect the data are coming under increasing scrutiny over privacy and security issues, because everything from heartbeats to insulin deficiencies will be stored on the devices and possibly on the cloud. Under the old Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), these devices – Fitbits, Jawbones and the like – aren’t covered. But some regulators and lawmakers believe that at least some of them should be regulated like other medical devices.
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VA Implements Waiting Room 'Smart Chairs'
9/25/2014 12:20 PM
The Department of Veterans Affairs installs Vecna's kiosk-based Vitals Chair at some facilities, aims to give patients more control and insight into their healthcare while streamlining practitioner workloads.
The US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is preparing to roll out "smart chairs" in waiting rooms at a small group of hospitals and clinics. This follows the agency's nearly completed implementation of 6,000 kiosks at 1,000 sites across the United States.
The Vitals Chair, designed by the kiosk maker Vecna, is not your typical waiting-room seat. It includes an antimicrobial touchscreen with magnetic stripe, blood pressure cuff, anti-bacterial wipes, thermometer, printer, sensor, and scale -- all of which are FDA-approved, according to Vecna. The wheelchair-accessible seat has one power cord and a network cable but no hard drive, because it does not store data. It can pose questionnaires, take vital statistics, and display information to users, among other features, Ben Bau, vice president and general manager patient self-service solutions at Vecna, said in an interview.
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Doctors may advise: ‘take your tablet to a consultation’
By Sarah Murray
In touch: interacting more easily represents a big step forward for patients
Using “Team Up” – Macmillan Cancer Support’s online matching service – volunteers can be connected to cancer sufferers who need help with shopping, ironing or simply some company on a walk. But while the digital revolution makes possible everything from remote monitoring to virtual consultations, it is raising questions for healthcare professionals.
Digital technology provides cancer patients with access to a far wider range of services than were available or accessible in the past. True, searching online for information relating to a particular condition has been possible for a long time. But Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites, as well as live-streamed video, are changing the way patients seek information about what to expect after a diagnosis.
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Do health apps really matter?
- By Andrew Larkin
- September 26th 2014
Apps are all the rage nowadays, including apps to help fight rage. That’s right, the iTunes app store contains several dozen apps designed to manage anger or reduce stress. Smartphones have become such a prevalent component of everyday life, it’s no surprise that a demand has risen for phone programs (also known as apps) that help us manage some of life’s most important elements, including personal health. But do these programs improve our ability to manage our health? Do health apps really matter?
Early apps for patients with diabetes demonstrate how a proposed app idea can sound useful in theory but provide limited tangible health benefits in practice. First generation diabetes apps worked like a digital notebook, in which apps linked with blood glucose monitors to record and catalog measured glucose levels. Although doctors and patients were initially charmed by high tech appeal and app convenience, the charm wore off as app use failed to improve patient glucose monitoring habits or medication compliance.
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Health IT Safety Remains Work in Progress for EHRs
SEP 24, 2014 11:15am ET
The widespread adoption of electronic health records is a double-edged sword for the healthcare industry with the potential for both improving and harming patient safety.
Earlier this month, data from the 2013 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey of Physician Workflow revealed that physicians using EHRs that met the meaningful use criteria were significantly more likely to report safety improvements than physicians that were not using EHRs. In addition, three times as many physicians reported that their EHR prevented a potential medication error than caused one.
“Even with this progress on EHR adoption and the improvements in quality and safety, we realize that patient safety events related to health IT can still occur,” wrote Amy Helwig, M.D., from ONC’s Office of the Chief Medical Officer, and Judy Murphy, R.N., director of the Office of Clinical Quality and Safety in a recent blog. “New analyses show that the most common types of health IT-related events involve medications and most often involve data input or display errors, software configurations, and/or interfaces between systems.”
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ACOs held back by poor interoperability
Posted on Sep 25, 2014
By Mike Miliard, Managing Editor
Most accountable care organizations have health information technology in place to improve quality and lower costs, but many say difficulties with data exchange are keeping them from reaching their potential.
Of the 62 ACOs polled by Premier healthcare alliance this past summer, 88 percent report "significant obstacles" in integrating data from disparate sources. Also, 83 percent say they have a hard time fitting analytics tools into their workflow. As ACOs grow, gathering data from more and different care settings, these challenges become more accute, according to Premier.
Cost and ROI are also cited as key roadblocks to more effective implementation of health IT, according to 90 percent of respondents.
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Punish EPR laggers - Kelsey
24 September 2014 Sam Sachdeva
Healthcare leaders must consider implementing “radical” proposals to improve the use of electronic patient records, such as stripping training accreditation from providers who fail to implement them, Tim Kelsey has said.
Speaking at the Healthcare Efficiency Through Technology expo in London, NHS England’s director of patients and information said providers who do not make the most of EPRs must be held to account.
“There must be no tolerance for hospitals that are not taking seriously their obligation to safely and digitally record what is happening to their patients, because that means we cannot measure outcomes,” he said.
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Hospitals Cut Costs by Getting Doctors to Stick to Guidelines
'Choosing Wisely' Campaign Has Physicians Weigh in on Standardizing Care
By Jeanne Whalen
Updated Sept. 22, 2014 7:00 p.m. ET
A hospital group in Delaware was concerned it was spending too much on cardiac monitoring for patients outside of intensive care who didn't need it. So it changed its computer system to encourage doctors to follow American Heart Association guidelines for using the monitors.
The number of patients using the monitors, and the group's daily costs for such monitoring, fell by 70% without any harm to patient care, researchers from Wilmington, Del.-based Christiana Care Health System report in a study in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The effort is part of a push by some hospitals across the nation to cut costs by standardizing care. Although professional bodies such as the AHA publish numerous guidelines advising doctors how best to treat various diseases, many doctors deviate from guidelines, which can lead to overuse of some tests and procedures. Doctors cite various reasons for deviating, from personal preference to institutional custom. Pressure from patients and doctors' desire to avoid getting sued can also be a factor.
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KLAS: Clinical Usability Ranks as Top Concern When Choosing an EHR
September 22, 2014 by Rajiv Leventhal
Nearly 75 percent of interviewed providers around the world reported that clinical usability outweighed every other criteria when choosing an electronic health record (EHR), according to a recent report from the Orem, Utah-based KLAS research.
After clinical usability, integration, product technology/architecture, and cost/value were respondents’ top concerns. Providers feel Epic is the clear leader in clinical usability and mention Cerner’s population health solutions. Perceived lower-cost solutions from Allscripts, CSC, InterSystems, and MEDITECH face an uphill battle; as providers weight their selections heavily toward usability and technology, higher-cost solutions Cerner and Epic benefit, according to the report. “Usability is the top dog. It is critical. We have to match the process and the system. There are a whole lot of things the system should be able to handle, and a big workflow is one of the key ones,” said one IT director who was interviewed.
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KLAS: Three-fourths of providers globally list EHR usability as most important
September 22, 2014 | By Marla Durben Hirsch
American providers are not the only ones seeking well designed electronic health records; almost three-fourths of providers around the world say that usability is the No. 1 factor in choosing an EHR system, according to a new report from Orem, Utah-based KLAS Research.
The report, Global EMR Perception 2014: Usability and Integration Driving Mindshare, found that 74 percent of those interviewed cited usability as their most important criterion; almost two-thirds (61 percent) identified clinician adoption/workflow issues their top concern about implementation.
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In Evolving Healthcare Business Model, Tech Plays Vital Role
The healthcare industry's shift toward value-based, coordinated care won't succeed if providers, payers and patients aren't connected to the information they need to make better health and wellness decisions. Entities that fail to do so could put themselves out of business.
CIO | Sep 23, 2014 5:15 AM PT
The healthcare industry's shift from its dominant fee-for-service structure forces organizations to rethink the way they do business. Embracing a value-based, bundled payment model means doing more to connect patients to providers, providers to each other, providers to payers and patients to payers.
Technology plays an important role on a number of levels, from consumer health applications and patient portals to analytics and electronic health record (EHR) systems. In fact, the success of payment reform and the accountable care organization (ACO) model may depend on IT, in part because value-based payment models beget administrative complexity.
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Stage 2's 365-Day Reporting Period Could Jeopardize Future of Meaningful Use
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Industry reaction to the Aug. 29 final rule issued by CMS was strong, swift and, to some, may have appeared ungrateful.
The rule was an acknowledgement that progress on Stage 2 of meaningful use had been excruciatingly slow. Well into 2014, the numbers weren't lying -- only a tiny percentage of providers had been able to prove that they met Stage 2 objectives. The new rule established new approaches for meeting meaningful use requirements in 2014, extended Stage 2 through 2016 and pushed back the start of Stage 3 until 2017.
But a key industry request -- a reduction in the length of time for which providers must report data proving they've achieved objectives included in Stage 2 -- was not heeded. CMS left the reporting period at 365 days, declining to cut it to 90 days, as many industry groups had asked. Providers recoiled at the decision; Russell Branzell, president and CEO of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, reflected provider sentiment by stating, "Now, the very future of meaningful use is in question."
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Who Will Be The Netflix Of Healthcare?
9/24/2014 09:06 AM
Healthcare disruption is real, the MediFuture event showed. How you react determines whether it's a threat or an opportunity.
Technological and structural changes pose an existential threat to healthcare incumbents but also a potentially rich opportunity for those who pivot fast enough to take advantage of them.
In other industries that have undergone disruptive change, the incumbents have often decided -- very belatedly -- to partner with the insurgents rather than dismissing them, according to Adrian Slywotzky, a "partner emeritus" with the international consulting firm Oliver Wyman and author of books including The Profit Zone and Demand.
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Penn State Launches Massive Epidemic Game, Online Course
SEP 23, 2014 9:31am ET
Researchers at Penn State University will launch Moocdemic 2.0, a massive multiplayer epidemic game simulation, on Sept. 29.
The game uses augmented reality to allow players to travel around the world and detect, spread, or even treat a virtual disease using their mobile phones. It supports Apple and Android devices and is completely free to play.
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Electronic surveillance helps hospitals slash death rates
September 24, 2014 | By Dan Bowman
The use of an electronic physiological surveillance system (EPSS) on patients correlated with two United Kingdom hospitals slashing mortality rates by more than 15 percent over the course of a year, according to research published online this week in BMJ Quality & Safety.
For the study, the researchers retrospectively examined the use of EPSS software--which streamlined the process of recording patient vital signs such as blood pressure and pulse--at Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth and University Hospital, Coventry; according to The Mirror, nurses deployed the software on mobile devices, including iPads, iPods and smartphones.
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EHRs too inauthentic to be relied on in court
September 23, 2014 | By Marla Durben Hirsch
Electronic health records are too variable to be reliable or authentic and should be tested before being used in evidentiary proceedings, according to an article in the Ava Maria Law Review, a publication of the Naples-Florida-based Ava Maria School of Law.
The article, "Electronic Health Records Systems: Testing the Limits of Digital Records' Reliability and Trust," notes that the HITECH Act does not address whether EHR information originates from a reliable and trustworthy source, and may need "special treatment" when called upon to support business requirements in legal proceedings.
For instance, since EHRs are used as much for securing payment as for documenting clinical information, they are used for "gaming" the system and creating false representations in the record, according to the article's authors. They also lack standardization, are easy to manipulate and are subject to "auto-spoliation."
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Electronic med packaging that records dosing boosts patient adherence more than similar tools
September 24, 2014 | By Dan Bowman
The use of electronic medication packaging (EMP) devices that are integrated into the care delivery system and designed to record dosing events are more frequently linked to improved medication adherence than other such devices, according to new research published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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It’s big, but is it clever?
Big data has become a big buzz word. But what is it, how does it differ from traditional analytics, and why should the NHS care anyway? Fiona Barr finds out; and finds that some trusts are already embracing the big data future.
From Amazon recommendations to Tesco vouchers, big data touches the lives of almost every UK citizen; but so far its impact on UK healthcare has been minimal.
The potential of this nebulous concept to transform the health and social care systems is, however, widely anticipated; and tentative first steps are now being taken to exploit it.
Projects promoted as use of ‘big data’ in the health service include analysis of seven years of free text and structured data by a Leeds trust, plans by a commissioning support unit to combine Google information with its own data sets, and a national initiative to analyse genomic information on 100,000 patients.
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Physicians, Patients Embrace Technology in Medicine
Brenda Goodman, MA
September 22, 2014
Technology is quickly changing many aspects of medicine, giving patients more power to take charge of their healthcare.
These changes are being embraced by many patients and physicians alike, a new survey has found.
The findings are part of the WebMD/Medscape Digital Technology Survey, which included more than 1100 patients and 1400 health professionals, including 827 physicians. Questions focused on issues related to the evolution of medical care, including smartphones to assist in the diagnostic process, procedure costs, the right to review medical records, radiation risks from imaging tests, and genetic testing.
Eric Topol, MD, editor-in-chief of Medscape and chief academic officer of Scripps Health, said the report is unique. There hasn't been a large survey that's asked the same questions of clinicians and patients.
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Epic Ties MyChart App to Apple HealthKit
SEP 22, 2014 9:55am ET
Hospital and physician software vendor Epic Systems Corp. is integrating Apple’s HealthKit into its EHR systems, which serve more than 170 million patients per year. Specifically, Epic customers will be able to use HealthKit through Epic’s MyChart app, which the company says is the most popular U.S. patient portal.
MyChart provides patients with access to their lab results, appointment information, current medications, immunization history, and more on their mobile devices. Sumit Rana, chief technology officer for Epic, told Health Data Management that the company has updated its MyChart app to—with a patient’s permission—access data from Apple’s HealthKit data repository and share it with their provider. And, on the provider side, Rana said clinicians can set rules as to what types of information they want access to.
“This has pretty profound implications for chronic disease management such as diabetes to be able to track how a patient is doing, providing a care team with a more complete picture of the patient’s health story,” says Rana. He argues that the HealthKit-MyChart integration “bridges the gap between consumer-collected data and data collected in traditional healthcare settings.”
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Early experiences with the iPhone 6
Posted on Sep 22, 2014
By John Halamka, CareGroup Health System, Life as a Healthcare CIO
I’m truly not an “Apple fanboy”. I’m a believer in “do-acracy”, rewarding people and companies that create useful products which save me time.
I stay objective about every company. I recently emailed one of my favorite companies which has slowed its innovation, “we need products not powerpoint”.
So what about the iPhone 6?
Although I’m an early adopter of many technology ideas - social media, mobile, analytics and cloud, I tend to be a laggard when purchasing devices for myself. I do not drive a Tesla, I drive the simplest, most cost effective Prius. I used an iPhone 4S from 2011 to 2014, skipping the entire iPhone 5/5S generation.
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Dartmouth researchers design bracelet to secure health IT systems
September 23, 2014 | By Katie Dvorak
A bracelet designed by Dartmouth University researchers could be a breakthrough when it comes to securing information systems--notably for medical records in healthcare settings.
The bracelet would authenticate users while they are using a computer and would automatically log them out when they step away from it or when someone else steps in to use the machine, according to an announcement from the school.
"In this work, we focused on the deauthentication problem for desktop computers because we were motivated by associated problems faced by healthcare professionals in hospitals," senior study author David Kotz, a professor in Dartmouth's department of computer science, said in the announcement.
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Emis creates PHR with Apple HealthKit
18 September 2014 Lyn Whitfield
Emis is using the Apple HealthKit platform to create a personal health record that is integrated with its Emis Web GP and clinical system.
Patients from the area covered by NHS North West London Clinical Commissioning Group will be the first to have the chance to use the new record, with the CCG encouraging its GPs to use the data collected.
Emis chief executive Chris Spencer said the company had been working on the project for two to three months, with “increasing visibility” as Apple got ready to launch its Apple Watch product, which can be used with the Apple Health app and HealthKit.
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Are wearable activity monitors equivalent to professional health advice?
Last updated: 20 September 2014 at 12am PST
Wearable tech is all the rage right now, with Google Glass and now the Apple Watch being gadget fiends' latest must-have items. Electronic activity monitors may be the most popular example of health-monitoring wearable technology. A new analysis from researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston - published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research - compared 13 of these devices.
"Despite their rising popularity, little is known about how these monitors differ from one another, what options they provide in their applications and how these options may impact their effectiveness," says Elizabeth Lyons, senior author of the new study and assistant professor at the Institute for Translational Sciences at the university.
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Is Your Healthcare IT Governance Keeping Up?
Some healthcare organizations struggle with ineffective steering committees, budgets that slash critical IT support, and disengaged users. Is yours one of them?
Over the past decade, healthcare information technology has transformed. Health systems small and large are increasingly automated and dependent on information systems. But even as they have embraced IT, a divide has emerged within organizations. Advanced governance allows some front-running organizations to rationalize IT spending, achieve unprecedented automation, and use critical data to drive the organization. But others -- perhaps yours -- struggle with ineffective steering committees, budgets that slash critical IT support, and disengaged and oppositional users.
Which side of this sounds like your organization? Here are some ways to tell.
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http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content/TEC-308668/QA-ONC-Deputy-Natl-Coordinator-on-EHR-Usability
Q&A: ONC Deputy Nat'l Coordinator on EHR Usability
Scott Mace, for HealthLeaders Media , September 23, 2014
Jacob Reider, MD, discusses the usability of electronic health record systems, which was recently lambasted by the AMA. He concedes usability can be improved. At issue is "the progression from where we are to where we need to get to," he says.
The AMA made its latest broadside last week against the appalling state of user interfaces in EHRs. Barely usable EHRs are arguably the biggest impediment to the promised productivity improvements that EHRs were supposed to deliver.
In the wake of the AMA's condemnation, I sat down last Friday with Jacob Reider, MD, deputy national coordinator, during his visit to a patient experience hackathon at Stanford University. Although we also spoke at length about interoperability, this week I will share the usability portion of our discussion.
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Meta-Analysis Shows Telehealth Reduces Chronic Condition Costs, Mortality
SEP 22, 2014 7:33am ET
The use of telemedicine to help manage chronic diseases such as congestive heart failure, stroke, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease can yield clear benefits including fewer and shorter hospital stays, fewer emergency room visits, less severe illness, and even fewer deaths.
That’s the conclusion of a study published in Telemedicine and e-Health. The authors of the multi-institution study said their findings were based on a systematic review of the professional literature published from 2000 to early 2014, selected on the basis of scientific merit. Of the studies that met the minimum criteria for inclusion, 19 dealt with CHF, 21 with stroke, and 17 with COPD. An additional set of 14 studies investigated cost.
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Where's the plan for interoperability?
Posted on Sep 22, 2014
By John Loonsk, MD, CGI Federal
It is a simple question: “Why doesn’t electronic health information flow after the nation spent $26 billion on electronic health records?" Suggesting a 10-year timeframe or arguing that there is progress if you look hard enough just doesn’t answer it.
Congress does not think so either. Despite the HITECH funds’ accomplishing a significant degree of EHR adoption there is still a large amount to do to achieve modest interoperability. And the question posed above is going to politically fester until something significant is done.
Part of the interoperability problem is that only a limited amount of the HITECH meaningful use leverage has been used to encourage data exchange. Interoperability took a back seat to adoption of EHRs and other things in meaningful use plans.
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Cerner, athenahealth to work with Apple
Posted on Sep 22, 2014
By Mike Miliard, Managing Editor
Epic won't be the only electronic health record company to leverage Apple's HealthKit technology: Cerner and athenahealth are the latest EHR vendors to say they'll develop apps that interface with the platform.
Both Kansas City, Mo.-based Cerner and Watertown, Mass.-based athenahealth are working with Apple to develop patient-facing tools that will make use of data aggregated via HealthKit, Reuters reports.
It was announced this past week that HealthKit's rollout will be delayed a few weeks as Apple addresses some bugs discovered in the 11th hour before its scheduled debut with the rest of iOS 8. When it's eventually released to the public, the plan is to put the platform to work in spurring wellness activities and keeping tabs on chronic conditions.
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Health analytics market to reach $20.8 billion by 2020
September 22, 2014 | By Dan Bowman
Federal mandates and chronic ailments will be key drivers of growth in the global health analytics market, which is expected to reach $20.8 billion by 2020, according to a report published this month by IQ4I Research & Consultancy.
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Governance key to a robust health IT system
September 22, 2014 | By Katie Dvorak
When it comes to growth of information technology at healthcare organizations, advanced governance is one of the key pieces to having a robust system, according to Dick Taylor, managing director and chief medical officer of the advisory services division of consulting firm MedSys Group.
Advanced governance, Taylor writes at InformationWeek, allows "organizations to rationalize IT spending, achieve unprecedented automation, and use critical data to drive the organization." However, he adds that many struggle with governance.
To that end, in a survey of 1,000 healthcare professionals, 35 percent of respondents say they either do not know if their organization has any information governance efforts underway or needs them, according to an American Health Information Management Association white paper.
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Surescripts Expands e-Prescribing Service Network
SEP 19, 2014 9:27am ET
Health network Surescripts says it is expanding its electronic prior authorization (ePA) service for e-prescribing with four nationwide pharmacy benefit managers, including CVS/caremark and Express Scripts, as well as six health technology vendors.
The vendors include: Aprima Medical Software, DAW SYSTEMS - SCRIPTSURE, digiChart, First Databank, Inc.’s FDB MedsTracker, OA Systems, and Stratus EMR.
"Through these connections and others already in place, prescribers nationwide will be able to submit ePA requests for 70 percent of patients, representing 210 million lives covered by the nation’s largest PBMs, and realize significant time and cost savings during the electronic prescribing process," Surescripts executives said in announcing the new agreements.
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Health IT jobs garner big bucks
Posted on Sep 19, 2014
By Bernie Monegain, Editor
A new survey from online jobs search firm HealthITJobs.com reveals that work in health IT results in above-average salaries for many positions in the field, depending on experience, location and gender.
Many of the jobs also come with bonuses.
Some of the key survey findings are:
- Health IT consulting companies pay the most with an average of $109,715.42.
- Health IT professionals in the Mid-Atlantic region make the most – $105,923.00.
- Some 80 percent of health IT professionals are satisfied with their jobs.
- There is a $35,000-plus salary difference between those with experience and those without experience in the field.
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Confidentiality of Health Information in PHRs and Mobile Health Apps in California
Monday, September 22, 2014
Consumers are increasingly using personal health records and mobile health applications to store their health information and to track and improve their health. However, federal privacy and security protections for health information stored in certain PHRs and in most mobile apps are spotty.
Recognizing this, California enacted legislation (AB 658) to protect the confidentiality of health information maintained in these increasingly popular tools. This law has important implications for consumers, developers of consumer-facing health tools and the quality of privacy and security protections afforded to health information stored in some PHRs and mobile health apps.
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AMA: EHR discontent is ‘taking a significant toll’ on physicians
The organization has issued eight priorities to improving system usability
Publish date: SEP 19, 2014
The American Medical Association (AMA) is calling on electronic health record (EHR) vendors to drastically improve the design and functionality of their systems, which have been a source of frustration for many of its members.
“Physicians have long embraced new technology quickly and regularly, and they see value that EHRs can deliver,” says Steven Stack, MD, president-elect of the AMA and chair of its Advisory Committee on Physician EHR Usability. “We do not want to go back to paper records. But today’s current EHR products are immature, costly, and are not well-designed to improve clinical care.”
In fact, a survey recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Internal Medicine found that physicians lose an average of 48 minutes per day to EHR data entry.
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Enjoy!
David.
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