Here are a few I came across last week.
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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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/half-of-providers-dont-utilize-health-information-exchange
Half of Providers Don’t Utilize Health Information Exchange
EHR vendors were the most significant factor of provider health information exchange use.
March 12, 2021 - Health information exchange (HIE) is utilized in less than half of referrals, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA), and factors like EHR vendor and patient characteristics were highly related to HIE use.
Accurate patient data and health information exchange is vital to effective care coordination and provider cost savings. However, health information exchange relies on robust health IT infrastructure to connect providers and hospitals.
The Promoting Interoperability program helps providers establish HIE connection. However, interoperability remains an issue for providers.
Researchers aimed to evaluate practice and market-level HIE use factors. The research team analyzed provider data from over 40,000 providers in Stage Two Meaningful Use and combined it with provider, practice, and market characteristics to associate HIE provider volume with those factors. Provider HIE use volume was measured by the percentage of referrals sent with electronic summaries of care (eSCR), the researchers explained.
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https://mhealthintelligence.com/news/mhealth-robotics-can-improve-patient-satisfaction-aid-ed-triage
mHealth Robotics Can Improve Patient Satisfaction, Aid ED Triage
Over 90 percent of patients reported satisfaction after an mHealth robotic-facilitated interview, showing promise for telehealth in ED settings.
March 12, 2021 - Emergency department triage interviews conducted by mHealth robotic systems lead to high levels of patient satisfaction, according to a new telehealth study published in JAMA Network Open.
The researchers conducted a cohort study and a national survey, ultimately finding that mobile robotic systems have significant potential to facilitate interactions between patients and providers.
The cohort study included 40 participants who were admitted to the emergency department at a large, urban academic health center between April and August 2020. A clinician controlled the robotic system, navigating it through the ED to the participant’s room. Then, clinicians completed a contactless video-based triage interview with the patient through the mobile robotic system.
Researchers collected patient satisfaction data upon completion of the triage interview, finding that the vast majority of participants (92.5 percent) reported satisfaction with the mobile interaction. What’s more, 82.5 percent said that their experience with a mobile robotic system was equivalent in quality compared to the receipt of an interview with a clinician physically present in the room.
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https://www.digitalhealth.net/2021/03/from-australia-to-the-uk-attend-anywheres-10-year-journey/
From Australia to the UK – Attend Anywhere’s 10 year journey
Not too many people had heard of Attend Anywhere before March 2020 but since then the video consulting capability has been offered to all, and adopted by most, NHS trusts across England.
Hanna Crouch 11 March, 2021
Chris Ryan, whose mother worked in the NHS, founded Global Telehealth (now called Attend Anywhere) in 1998. The solution was developed over many years in the same building as the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Australia and first used for direct patient access in 2010. It was not until 2016 however that it was introduced across Scotland after the company won a pilot via a competitive process.
Then in March 2020, the company was awarded a £4.8m one-year contract to help trusts bolster their remote consultation capacity in England during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ryan explained to Digital Health News the company had originally won, through a competitive process, a pilot that involved between 35 and 40 trusts. The pilot had been due to run until December 2020 but when Covid hit, the company was given a contract to build a platform for NHS England and make it available for all NHS trusts.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/machine-learning-limited-when-applied-to-clinical-data-registries
Machine Learning Limited When Applied to Clinical Data Registries
To fully leverage machine learning tools, the healthcare industry will need to improve the quality of clinical data registries.
By Jessica Kent
March 11, 2021 - When applied to a clinical data registry, machine learning algorithms showed no significant improvement in predicting adverse outcomes after an acute myocardial infarction (AMI), a study published in JAMA Cardiology.
Accurately assessing an individual’s risk of death after AMI is useful for guiding clinical decisions for patients and evaluating hospital performance. Researchers noted that existing risk prediction models developed to forecast AMI outcomes have been limited by lack of inclusion of nonlinear effects and complex interactions among variables in national samples.
“With advances in computation and analytics, however, it may be possible to create models in large and diverse patient groups, which may improve on traditional models with existing information. Specifically, the application of machine learning techniques has the potential to improve on accuracy in the prediction of in-hospital mortality after AMI,” the team stated.
Researchers used the American College of Cardiology’s (ACC) Chest Pain-MI Registry from 2011 to 2016, which includes nearly one million patients hospitalized for AMI or heart attack across more than 1,000 US hospitals.
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ONC chief Micky Tripathi talks public health data systems and 'health equity by design'
As he focuses on shoring up data-sharing resiliency and ensuring that new IT initiatives bake in SDOH as a "fundamental design criterion," the new national coordinator also reminded people about an important April 5 start date.
By Mike Miliard
March 12, 2021 10:30 AM
National Coordinator for Health IT Micky Tripathi spoke Thursday at Sirona Strategies' Health IT Leadership Roundtable
Speaking on Thursday at Sirona Strategies' Health IT Leadership Roundtable, newly-minted National Coordinator for Health IT Micky Tripathi offered an overview of ONC's strategic priorities for the near future, and described how the agency is doing tactical work on wider Biden administration policy goals.
Of course, said Tripathi, "Job number one is COVID-19 right now. We are supporting all of the work related to the execution of the executive orders … [and] make sure that every single one of those is hitting the mark in terms of the priority, the urgency, the importance and the execution."
Systems 'stretched to their limits'
There have been a flurry of executive orders from the White House since President Biden took office, of course, but one of the most potentially consequential is entitled "Ensuring a Data-Driven Response to COVID-19 and Future High-Consequence Public Health Threats-----
https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/technology/ncsa-cybersecurity-update-update-update
NCSA on Cybersecurity: 'Update, Update, Update'
Analysis | By Scott Mace | March 09, 2021
Act now to protect patient data by replacing outdated software and instituting cybersecurity training and drills.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Make cybersecurity a priority. Exponential growth of the digital transformation of healthcare makes cybersecurity more important than ever.
· Replace outdated legacy systems.
· Robust passwords and multi-factor authentication are a must, NCSA chief says.
The National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) has been on the front lines of the cyber-assault on businesses, especially healthcare, by criminals since well before the pandemic struck.
NCSA executive director Kelvin Coleman recently spoke with HealthLeaders about the continuing threat posed by criminals who see healthcare continuing to be one of the biggest, most lucrative targets for their ever-increasing cyber-intrusion capabilities.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/ehr-flowsheet-documentation-challenges-cause-clinician-burnout
EHR Flowsheet, Documentation Challenges Cause Clinician Burnout
Instead of implementing an EHR documentation solution, researchers suggested optimizing the EHR flowsheet to boost EHR documentation and reduce clinician burnout.
March 11, 2021 - Optimizing and simplifying the EHR flowsheet to structured response fields rather than a text input dialogue could help reduce clinician burnout and aid EHR documentation, according to a study published in JMIR Publications.
Clinical EHR documentation was initially designed to record clinical information as provider notes in real-time during a consultation, assessment, imaging, or treatment, ultimately to share patient information among health providers.
While the transition from paper to EHR documentation has allowed for more accessible and legible notes, it is a primary cause of clinician burden. EHR documentation can cause information overload and yield larger amounts of text that is not always relevant to patient care.
Although health IT specialists are working on EHR solutions, like voice recorders, to reduce documentation-related burden. These are in early prototype phase and are unlikely to be integrated into practices in the near future, the study authors wrote. As a result, optimizing existing EHR system functionalities could be a more practical option.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/90-of-hospitals-have-artificial-intelligence-strategies-in-place
90% of Hospitals Have Artificial Intelligence Strategies in Place
Healthcare artificial intelligence awareness and adoption has increased significantly in the past year, with familiarity rising among hospital executives.
By Jessica Kent
March 11, 2021 - Nine in ten hospitals now have an artificial intelligence strategy in place, and 75 percent of healthcare executives believe AI initiatives are more critical now because of the pandemic, according to a report from Sage Growth Partners.
These results show a significant increase from 2019, when 47 percent had no AI or automation plan in place.
Of the 90 percent of hospitals with an AI strategy, the report showed that 41 percent of organizations are still in the planning stage, while 25 percent are in the early implementation stage.
Additionally, the report noted that from 2019 to 2020, executive familiarity with automation grew from 50 percent to 66 percent and deployment of automation solutions increased from 23 percent to 34 percent.
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Proposed Data Privacy Bill Creates Federal Data Standard, Empowers FTC
A newly proposed consumer data privacy bill aims to create a federal data standard and gives the FTC authority to enforce penalties against companies that fail to comply.
March 11, 2021 - Rep. Suzan Delbene, D-Washington, introduced a national consumer data privacy bill, which would create a federal data privacy standard and supersede the patchwork of state laws. The proposed legislation includes regulations for a range of data, including genetic and health information.
The proposal is the first privacy legislation of 2021. Congress made consumer data privacy a key priority in 2019 with a number of proposed bills and Congressional hearings to discuss necessary steps to shoring up privacy protections.
Previous hearings and proposals settled on the need for a bipartisan agreement, while empowering the FTC with the authority to impose fines on entities that fail to comply with standards. However, Congress has yet to settle on how to meet in the middle.
And with COVID-19, much of the privacy discussion was put on the back burner.
Delbene’s proposal takes aim at some of these challenges, particularly the lack of a federal data privacy standard and the patchwork of state laws. The argument is that the range of privacy regulations can and have led to confusion for both businesses and individuals.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/ehr-simulation-training-garners-positive-resident-feedback
EHR Simulation Training Garners Positive Resident Feedback
A hands-on EHR simulation training program can result in increased EHR satisfaction and education.
March 10, 2021 - Workflow-specific EHR simulation training is a more enjoyable and beneficial EHR training tactic for residents than traditional approaches, according to a study published in JMIR Publications.
Quality EHR training is essential to clinicians and users, and especially those new to the technology. An effective EHR training program can reduce the likelihood of clinician burnout and boost EHR satisfaction.
According to the study authors, a resident can boost her EHR skills by emulating peer EHR use, which typically focuses on documentation, but it does not focus on clinical reasoning or quantifying the patient’s clinical status.
“The utilization of EHR simulations that feature patient records has gained traction as a solution for these problems in EHR education because, as stated by a national consensus conference, simulation is capable of matching EHR training with provider-specific workflow,” the study authors explained. “Critical to this is to ensure that the EHR chart has the appropriate degree of realism (which is termed Fidelity) to allow for reproduction on workflow.”
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Biden announces national vaccine finder website, May 1 eligibility for all adults
The President promised rapid progress on vaccination in his first prime time address to the United States.
March 11, 2021 09:11 PM
In his first prime time address to the nation, commemorating the anniversary of the COVID-19 shutdown order, President Joe Biden made news with two major announcements about his administration's vaccine roll-out: a pledge to make all adult Americans eligible for the vaccine by May 1 and the launch of a national website to facilitate those vaccinations.
"This is one of the most complex operations we’ve undertaken as a nation in a long time," Biden said. "That’s why I’m using every power I have as president of the United States to put us on a war footing to get the job done."
WHAT'S THE IMPACT?
The White House laid out the plans in more detail in a fact sheet, stating that the President will direct states, Tribes, and territories to lift eligibility restrictions by May 1, based on the White House response team's confidence in both the supply of the vaccine and the progress of prioritized vaccinations.
"All adult Americans will be eligible to get a vaccine no later than May 1," Biden said. "That’s much earlier than expected. Now let me be clear, that doesn’t mean everyone’s going to have that shot immediately, but it means you’ll be able to get in line beginning May 1."
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/covid-19-relief-package-includes-health-it-expansion
COVID-19 relief package includes health IT expansion
The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan allocates $500 million to support modernization initiatives at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other technology provisions.
By Kat Jercich
March 11, 2021 09:15 AM
The $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill sent to President Joe Biden on Wednesday includes a number of provisions aimed at expanding health IT.
Like the coronavirus relief packages before it, the legislation acknowledges the role digital health tools can play in addressing the fallout from the COVID-19 crisis – and earmarks funds toward bolstering those tools, particularly in rural communities.
Biden is expected to sign the bill into law on Friday.
WHY IT MATTERS
Unsurprisingly, much of the bill focuses on COVID-19 response, including vaccines and continued testing.
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Information Blocking Exceptions in 21st Century Cures Act
March 11, 2021
One of the most challenging pieces of the information blocking regulation that’s about to hit healthcare on April 5, 2021 is all the exceptions that are included. These exceptions are important, because there are some reasonable times when it might be in anyone’s best interest to share data. However, I’m sure many healthcare organizations are going to be spending a lot of time pouring over the various information blocking exceptions and having long discussions about what they really mean.
For those not familiar with the exceptions, here’s the short overview of exceptions:
Steven Posnack from ONC has a great blog post on the various exceptions as well where he outlines the details of the 2 categories of exceptions:
Category 1: Exceptions that involve not fulfilling requests to access, exchange, or use EHI. Five specific exceptions were established in this category. These exceptions aim to give clarity to actors that their practices (consistent with an exception) would not constitute information blocking when they are unable to share all the EHI requested or part of the EHI requested. For example, the Cures Act Final Rule provides exceptions to prevent patient harm, protect patient privacy, and ensure the security of EHI. These exceptions broadly address scenarios such as when a patient’s consent is required and the patient has denied that consent, health IT downtime events, or being unable to segment EHI that, for example, cannot be disclosed by law.
Category 2: Exceptions that involve procedures for fulfilling requests to access, exchange, or use EHI. Three exceptions were established in this category. These exceptions aim to support actors when they are willing to share EHI but may need to do so in a different format than requested or to address specific market considerations, such as intellectual property rights or fees, before doing so. These exceptions recognize that actors should be able to engage and negotiate EHI-related sharing and services in an open market. At the same time, many of the complaints leading up to the Cures Act’s passage and ONC’s subsequent regulation indicated that actors were leveraging their market power to engage in anti-competitive and EHI-restrictive practices – causing more friction in the market and preventing EHI from being shared. Accordingly, the three specific exceptions that HHS adopted provide guardrails for actors with the ultimate goal of EHI being shared.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2021/03/11/precision-medicine-informatics-deployment-rate-growing/
Precision Medicine Informatics Deployment Rate Growing
March 11, 2021
New research suggests that healthcare organizations are getting increasingly serious about the deployment of precision medicine informatics.
According to a study appearing in the Journal of Precision Medicine and co-sponsored by XIFIN, 76% of respondents had invested in precision medical informatics (PMI), 18% said that they hadn’t made such investments but were planning to do so, 9% were just beginning plans and 6% had completed their PMI plans.
When asked what key business drivers prompted their PMI investments, 66.2% cited patient outcomes, 50% patient safety and 51.5% business strategy. Other areas of interest included customer needs, while 34% to 38% of participants listed quality, business efficiency, process optimization and cost savings as business drivers.
Notably, few of the respondents seem to see PMI as a net gain financially, with revenue generation and financial stability being cited by less 30% of those taking the survey.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/meditech-launches-genomics-ehr-solution-to-boost-precision-medicine
MEDITECH Launches Genomics EHR Solution to Boost Precision Medicine
MEDITECH users can now receive, store, and view genomic data in one, streamlined workflow.
March 10, 2021 - MEDITECH has announced the launch of Expanse Genomics, an EHR solution that the vendor said could improve precision medicine by helping users receive, store, and view complex genomic data.
Genomic testing has become an important tool to enhance clinical decision-making and ultimately precision medicine. However, health IT experts have found it challenging to integrate and interpret this data, mostly due to a lack of interoperability.
In order to integrate genomic information into an EHR system, health IT professionals must amplify patient autonomy, access genetic literacy, establish privacy and protection, transfer data, and assign a data set.
“Our Expanse Genomics solution provides health systems of all sizes the ability to tap into the power of precision medicine by integrating the process of collecting, storing, and centralizing the display of patient genetic information in the EHR, and providing guidance and clinical decision support,” Hoda Sayed-Friel, executive vice president of MEDITECH said in a statement.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/how-a-digital-platform-provides-genomic-data-at-the-point-of-care
How a Digital Platform Provides Genomic Data at the Point of Care
NorthShore University HealthSystem has built a digital platform that delivers genomic data to providers at the point of care.
By Jessica Kent
March 10, 2021 - The emergence of next-generation sequencing technology has led to widespread genomic testing and the availability of genomic data, providing a way for clinicians and patients to better understand disease risk and health outcomes.
However, the rise of genomic data in clinical care has come with several informatics challenges. Provider organizations have to find ways of managing large amounts of data, interpreting genomic test results, and using these results to make more informed clinical decisions.
At NorthShore University HealthSystem, researchers recognized the need to implement a tool that could help integrate genomics with routine clinical care. After deploying a commercial solution, it became clear to leaders that the organization would have to build its own platform to advance its precision medicine efforts.
“Genomics is moving rapidly and the technology is changing quickly, so agility is very important. We decided we needed to build a solution internally to have competency in this area,” Kamalakar Gulukota, PhD, Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at NorthShore, told HealthITAnalytics.
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https://patientengagementhit.com/news/is-the-digital-divide-the-newest-social-determinant-of-health
Is the Digital Divide the Newest Social Determinant of Health?
The digital divide fuels and is fueled by other leading social determinants of health, ultimately having an impact on patient wellness and health equity.
By Sara Heath
March 10, 2021 - As healthcare continues to lean on technological innovations, a new social determinant of health is coming to the forefront: the digital divide.
The digital divide is the chasm between those who have access to technologies and the digital literacy to work them, and those who don’t. In healthcare, the digital divide can lead to disparities in patient portal adoption, telehealth care access, or ability to utilize patient-facing practice management software, like online appointment schedulers.
The question around the digital divide in healthcare is not new. When the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) put patient portal adoption as a key metric in the EHR Incentive Programs, healthcare organizations lamented an older population that wasn’t ready to use the technology.
A digital divide was splitting patient engagement strategies into those for the old and for the young, with many clinicians creating protocol that catered to generational differences.
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Epic Developing an EHR AI Assistant, but is At Least 2 Years Out
March 10, 2021
In a recent online seminar at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), Judy Faulkner, Founder of Epic, was the guest of honor with moderator Dara Mize, MD, assistant professor of Biomedical Informatics. This was part of a weekly Department of Biomedical Informatics seminar they hold according to a VUMC announcement. In the seminar, Judy shared some interesting perspectives on what we can expect from Epic.
The biggest piece of what was shared by Judy was Epic’s work to create an EHR AI Assistant and how it is still at least 2 years out. Here’s the summary of what she said:
Faulkner said the company is still at least two years away from releasing an artificial intelligence component that could listen in on the conversation between the clinician and patient and then draft clinician orders and a plan of care.
She observed that U.S. clinicians in part bring the documentation burden on themselves, writing notes in the record that are far longer than those written by their foreign counterparts, often needlessly repeating information in the note that is already captured and presented elsewhere in the record.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/cvs-health-aims-to-alleviate-clinician-burnout-through-ehr-alerts
CVS Health Aims to Alleviate Clinician Burnout Through EHR Alerts
A recent CVS Health report said the company is looking to decrease the number of EHR alerts to lessen clinician burnout.
March 09, 2021 - CVS Health is striving to mitigate clinician burnout by limiting the number of EHR alerts, according to CVS Health’s Health Trends Report 2021.
Furthermore, CVS Health is aiming to improve interoperability by integrating natural language processing. The company also said its EHR vendor, Epic Systems, is optimizing its patient portal, MyChart, in preparation for the ONC interoperability rule.
“In 2021 and beyond, EHRs will continue to face these growing pains,” wrote the report authors. “Innovations in both software and integration are already changing some of their more vexing features.”
Minimizing EHR alerts
EHR fatigue caused by alerts has been a problem for clinicians who are already struggling with EHR usability overload. Low-value EHR alerts can hurt patient care and contribute to physician burnout.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/apis-need-increased-standardization-tools-to-lift-data-research
APIs Need Increased Standardization, Tools to Lift Data Research
The ONC final interoperability rule should trigger API utilization and standardization.
March 08, 2021 - Current application programming interfaces (APIs) need increased standardization and tools to expand use in research and data extraction, according to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) Researcher Perspectives on APIs report.
Specifically, ONC said there needs to be more standardization and improved tools for configuring, extracting, and mapping data across separate healthcare organizations. Researchers also need to be more aware of and educated about Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) and FHIR Bulk Data Access APIs to utilize full API potential, ONC recommended.
While the ONC final interoperability rule eradicates information blocking, it also calls on medical providers and device developers to promote patient data access using third-party apps and APIs. Once APIs are more prevalent, their research utilization should expand.
“The data sources that exist to inform clinical and biomedical research are more diverse than ever, drawing from electronic health records (EHRs), genomic tests, recordings from wearable devices, and patient surveys, to name a few,” ONC wrote. “The insights that can be drawn from these require effective data collection, aggregation, and sharing in addition to health IT infrastructure capable of supporting research goals.”
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/ai-method-facilitates-collaboration-while-protecting-data-privacy
AI Method Facilitates Collaboration While Protecting Data Privacy
An artificial intelligence method can help researchers collaboratively train algorithms without compromising patient data privacy.
By Jessica Kent
March 08, 2021 - A new approach could help researchers build high-quality artificial intelligence algorithms while protecting patient data privacy, accelerating model development and innovation, according to a study published in Nature Communications.
A major challenge of developing successful AI algorithms is the availability of data and patient privacy, researchers noted. Sharing medical data, even if the information is de-identified, can pose some risk to the privacy of patients.
Recently, researchers have explored an alternative method of training AI algorithms that avoids direct data sharing. Called federated learning, the approach involves using data from a variety of institutions and distributing computational training operations across all sites.
“In federated learning, models are trained simultaneously at each site and then periodically aggregated and redistributed. This approach requires only the transfer of learned model weights between institutions, thus eliminating the requirement to directly share data,” the team stated.
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National Quality Forum Looks to Update Telehealth Quality Benchmarks
In a new Healthcare Strategies podcast, Sheri Winsper, senior vice president of quality measurement for the National Quality Forum, outlines the agency's plans for updating its 2017 telehealth guidelines and a new project with CMS.
March 08, 2021 - The coronavirus pandemic, now creeping into its second year, has given federal regulators mountains of data on telehealth. Now it’s up to the National Quality Forum to develop a framework for measuring how well telehealth has done and what it can do better.
“Right now there are zero endorsed measures that are telehealth-focused,” says Sheri Winsper, senior vice president of quality measurement for the Washington, DC-based organization. So the NQF has its work cut out as it looks to measure how connected health tools and platforms have affected dynamics like clinical outcomes, access to care, patient engagement and cost of care.
Winsper, a recent participant in Xtelligent Healthcare Media’s Healthcare Strategies podcast series, says the NQF is now working on an update of its 2017 telehealth framework. The organization is partnering with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services as well, and has created a committee to look at how telehealth has affected outcomes and health system readiness in rural areas, which have been hard-hit by COVID-19.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/warren-clinic-wastes-no-vaccine-help-automated-reminders
Warren Clinic wastes no vaccine with help from automated reminders
The Tulsa-based hub provider has also slashed appointment no-shows by integrating Relatient patient engagement technology with its Epic EHR.
By Bill Siwicki
March 09, 2021 12:15 PM
The Warren Clinic in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a 450-provider employed medical group that's part of the Saint Francis Health System. Three million people need the COVID-19 vaccine in Oklahoma and Warren is the hub for Tulsa as well as seven surrounding counties.
THE PROBLEM
The clinic started planning early for how it would handle the influx of appointments once the COVID-19 vaccine became available.
"We established a COVID-19 department to spearhead the entire initiative and set up vaccine clinics to focus solely on the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine," said Warren Clinic vice president Collin Henry.
"One of our first priorities was to develop an effective way to communicate with the public very quickly and keep the entire process organized. Making sure vaccine doses didn't get wasted was also of the utmost importance to us."
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Workgroup creates FHIR-based clinical practice guideline for COVID-19
Providers and vendors collaborated to build a guideline aimed at helping emergency physicians determine when to admit or discharge patients.
By Kat Jercich
March 09, 2021 09:00 AM
A national workgroup on Tuesday unveiled a new evidence-based clinical care guideline to help emergency physicians determine when to admit or discharge COVID-19 patients and provide the appropriate level of care.
The project leaders include the American College of Emergency Physicians, the COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition Digital Guidelines Working Group, Apervita and EvidenceCare, among others.
The workgroup's COVID-19 Severity Classification Tool uses HL7's Computable Practice Guidelines on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR).
"A global pandemic requires clinicians and informaticists working together to quickly determine what the evidence says and push guidance to the front lines quickly as that evidence emerges," said Dr. Christopher Tignanelli, an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Minnesota Medical School, in a statement.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2021/03/09/is-healthcare-ai-adoption-moving-too-fast/
Is Healthcare AI Adoption Moving Too Fast?
March 9, 2021
Healthcare AI adoption has been growing rapidly, and to date seems to have been producing worthwhile results most of the time. However, a new survey suggests that at least some healthcare leaders are a bit uncomfortable with the speed at which healthcare AI is being put in place, even if they still believe it can accomplish great things under the right circumstances.
According to the survey, which was conducted by KPMG, 67% of healthcare business leaders reported that that AI was at least moderately functional in their organizations. This represents a far lower share than other industries, such as industrial manufacturing (93%), financial services (84%), tech (83%), retail (81%) and life sciences (77%). Only government respondents reported a lower rate of functional AI use (61%).
At least three saw large increases in those seeing AI functioning in their organizations, including financial services (37 percentage point increase), retail (29 percent point increase) and tech (20 percentage point increase).
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Reducing the Clinician Burden: Shaping Health IT as an Asset
Andrew Gettinger and Teresa Zayas Cabán | March 4, 2021
Health IT has helped drive progress in health care over the last decade, but it has also introduced a variety of different challenges, many reported by the clinical community. As we explored in our latest article published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, ONC and other federal partners have taken and continue to take steps to reduce clinician burden when using health IT.
As adoption of health IT has increased, we have seen firsthand how usability issues associated with the underlying software, implementation choices made by practices and institutions, and lack of effective training can diminish the desired impact of health IT use. Well-meaning initiatives promoting field-defined, actionable data have led to “check the box” workflows and subsequent loss of the patient’s narrative.
Rectifying these issues requires coordinated attention to improved design of health IT systems, better system configuration decisions, and effective end-user training during implementation. These actions can help health IT to function as an asset instead of an obstacle, and positively impact usability, safety, clinician satisfaction with health IT, and care.
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https://patientengagementhit.com/news/sexual-minorities-race-linked-to-covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy
Sexual Minorities, Race Linked To COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy
Public health efforts must prevent further health disparities by addressing COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among sex and gender minorities (SGM).
March 08, 2021 - Race, sexual identity, medical mistrust, and social concern were associated with increased COVID‐19 vaccine hesitancy among sexual and gender minority (SGM) patients, according to a new study published in Vaccines.
University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing) researchers investigated COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among a national sample of 1,350 SGM. Cis-gender males made up most of the sample (95.7 percent), and over half of the participants were gay (61.6 percent) and Black (57.9 percent).
Black patients were significantly less likely to accept a COVID-19 vaccine compared to their White counterparts. Asian participants reported the greatest vaccine acceptance.
The researchers found strong correlations between increased COVID-19 vaccine hesitance, medical mistrust, and social concern regarding COVID-19 vaccine stigma. Altruism was significantly associated with increased vaccine acceptance.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/congress-urges-ftc-crackdown-on-health-apps-via-breach-notice-rule
Congress Urges FTC Crackdown on Health Apps Via Breach Notice Rule
Three Congressional members are urging the FTC to enforce its Health Breach Notification Rule to penalize mobile apps sharing personal health data with third-party sources.
March 08, 2021 - A group of three Congressional members from New Jersey are urging the Federal Trade Commission to utilize its Health Breach Notification Rule to crack down on mobile health apps that share personal health information with third parties without user consent.
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey and Democratic New Jersey Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Mikie Sherrill sent a letter to the FTC, blasting certain menstruation-tracking mobile health apps for failing to obtain user consent before sharing sensitive information of women with outside parties.
The letter follows a recent lawsuit against Easy Healthcare, which owns the Premom fertility app. The filing alleges that the platform routinely shares personal and geolocation information with three marketing, data collections, and analytics firms with ties to China.
The lawsuit further claimed those Chinese firms were also allowed access to sensitive user data, such as personal health interests, health, religion, politics, and a host of other sensitive data.
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Pilot Program to Study Telehealth Value in Advance Care Planning
Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School are taking part in an NIH-funded study to evaluate the use of telehealth in advance care planning for patients receiving home-based palliative care.
March 05, 2021 - Two Massachusetts healthcare providers are taking part in a federally funded in study to determine how telehealth can be used to facilitate advance care planning for patients with life-threatening illnesses who are receiving home-based care.
Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School are partnering with ACP decisions, a non-profit focused on advance care planning, and connected health company Clover Health Investments on the study, which is financed by a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health.
“We expect this study will generate pivotal data to help us understand if scalable video technology can meaningfully improve end of life outcomes for the most vulnerable older adults who are rarely part of clinical trials,” Kumar Dharmarajan, chief scientific officer at New Jersey-based Clover Health and an adjunct assistant professor at the Yale School of Medicine, said in a press release.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic pushed care providers to shift as many services as possible from in-person to virtual care channels, some were exploring how telehealth could be used in palliative care, both to reduce the burden on patients and their families and to expand the reach of the limited number of palliative care providers.
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Withings launches new cellular connected devices to take the pain points out of at-home health monitoring
by Brian T. Horowitz |
Mar 5, 2021 12:13pm
Connected devices like smart scales that help patients monitor their health at home often come with a weighty setup.
Device maker Withings is using its expertise with consumer health products to develop monitoring devices that work right out of the box, removing the pain of complex assembly and connectivity.
The company recently introduced two new cellular devices that can transmit details from blood pressure to weight right from a patient's home to a doctor's office. The Withings Body Pro smart scale and BPM Connect Pro blood pressure monitor target users without tech expertise because they do not require a mobile app or smartphone. The devices come with a SIM card to connect the devices to a cellular network.
The devices include API and SDK integrations to make them compatible with partner’s apps and ecosystems, according to the company.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/how-provider-orgs-need-respond-2021s-cybersecurity-threats
How provider orgs need to respond to 2021's cybersecurity threats
A healthcare cybersecurity expert offers key advice on how best to protect digital assets.
By Bill Siwicki
March 08, 2021 12:01 PM
The COVID-19 pandemic created a vastly different working paradigm in healthcare, with huge numbers of employees moving from the office environment to working from home.
This, in turn, opened up all sorts of new avenues for hackers to launch attacks against provider organizations and their vital health information and systems. At the same time, the sophistication of cyberattacks was continuing to increase.
Healthcare IT News interviewed Christophe Doré, cybersecurity manager at Capsule Technologies, a vendor of medical data technologies for healthcare organizations. He described the state of cybersecurity in healthcare during the pandemic, and what provider organizations should expect this year.
Q: Why, since the onset of the pandemic, has cyber criminality increased along with the sophistication of cyberattacks?
A: Hospitals transformed overnight in how they operated as a result of the pandemic. Many of them were unprepared for the vast numbers of employees working at home because this was a scenario nobody really anticipated. This created new opportunities for bad actors to penetrate hospital networks.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/onc-has-ideas-reducing-clinician-burden-health-it
ONC has ideas for reducing clinician burden with health IT
"We should work toward a future state where all clinicians feel that their health IT is so essential to their practice that they cannot provide care without it."
By Kat Jercich
March 08, 2021 11:46 AM
Advancements in healthcare information technology have driven progress but also introduced new challenges for providers, say two officials in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.
"As adoption of health IT has increased, we have seen firsthand how usability issues associated with the underlying software, implementation choices made by practices and institutions, and lack of effective training can diminish the desired impact of health IT use," wrote ONC Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Andrew Gettinger and Chief Scientist Teresa Zayas Cabán in a blog post this past week.
"Rectifying these issues requires coordinated attention to improved design of health IT systems, better system configuration decisions, and effective end-user training during implementation," they said.
WHY IT MATTERS
Health IT's role in clinician burnout has been a hot-button topic for years, with individuals often pointing to technology such as electronic health records as the culprit.
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Renown Health: Age is Not a Barrier to Using Epic’s MyChart
March 8, 2021
There is a long held IT myth that adults 75 years and older are not capable of or don’t want to use the latest technology. Renown Health shattered that myth when they rolled out Epic’s MyChart for COVID-19 vaccine appointments. It turns out with proper planning and support; older adults are more than capable of using a patient portal.
Decentralized Approach to Vaccination
The US has taken a decentralized approach to COVD-19 vaccination. Each state has allowed designated dispensing sites (pharmacies, hospitals, or other types of healthcare organizations) to implement the tools and practices that they deemed best for their communities. Although this has resulted in a hodgepodge of approaches when viewed at a national and state level, this decentralized approach has, for the most part, achieved the goal of getting vaccines into communities quickly.
Renown Health, a not-for-profit integrated healthcare network serving Nevada, Lake Tahoe and northeast California, is one of the dispensing sites for the COVID-19 vaccines in Nevada. Given the size of their community, the team at Renown knew that a paper or manual based process would not work.
Healthcare IT Today sat down with Kristopher Zierolf, Director of IT Applications and Stacey Sunday, Manager of Communications and Public Affairs at Renown to learn how they overcame this challenge.
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Challenges, Best Practices of EHR Software for Small Hospitals Outlined in Latest KLAS Report
Analysis | By Scott Mace | March 08, 2021
Research conducted among thousands of clinicians informs the report, which covers products from six EHR vendors.
The top electronic health record challenges faced by small hospitals, as well as best practices, are described in a recent report from KLAS.
KLAS defines small community hospitals as having 1 to 200 beds, and its report, "Small Community Hospital EMR Best Practices 2021," considers the following primary EHR software intended for these hospitals:
- CPSI Evident Thrive EHR
- Allscripts Sunrise Acute Care
- MEDHOST Enterprise Clinicals
- Cerner Millennium PowerChart
Touch/ CommunityWorks Clinicals
- Epic Community Connect EpicCare EMR [C]
This report lists various challenges and best practices for each vendor's EHR software, as determined by KLAS research.
According to KLAS, it is possible for any size organization, using just about any EHR software, to assure strong clinician success. Two practices identified by KLAS research are key to enabling success.
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https://histalk2.com/2021/03/05/weekender-3-5-21/
Weekly News Recap
- Several health systems and home-based care companies form Moving Health Home to encourage federal payment for moving some care from hospitals to home.
- Premier acquires Invoice Delivery Services.
- Duke University personalized chronic care spinout ZealCare will launch later this month.
- BD acquires GSL Solutions.
- Universal Health Services estimates that September’s cyberattack has caused $67 million in losses.
- HHS OIG officials recommend that prescriptions be required to include the condition for which the drug is being used to reduce errors, allow correct CMS payment, and help families sort patient meds.
- Naval Medical Center San Diego goes live on Cerner.
- Ambulatory health IT vendor MTBC will change its name to CareCloud, the EHR vendor it acquired in January 2020.
- Cigna’s Evernorth health services business will acquire telehealth vendor MDLive.
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Enjoy!
David.
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