Quote Of The Year

Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"

or

H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Saturday, March 03, 2012

Weekly Overseas Health IT Links - 3rd March, 2012.

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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Positive reaction to MU Stage 2 aside, hard work and challenges ahead

By kterry
Created Feb 22 2012 - 4:00pm
Attendees at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society's annual conference in Las Vegas greeted the announcement today of the proposed rules for Stage 2 Meaningful Use [1] and electronic health record certification with applause. But the actual implementation of these requirements--those that are retained in the final rule, at least--will certainly pose some major challenges to both providers and EHR vendors.
Stage 2 is "hard work, but we can get there, even with ICD-10 and other regulatory requirements," Neal Ganguly, vice president and CIO of CentraState Healthcare System [2] in Freehold, N.J., told FierceHealthIT. CentraState has already attested to Stage 1 Meaningful Use and received its 2011 payment, he noted.
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CMS releases Stage 2 Meaningful Use proposals

By kterry
Created Feb 22 2012 - 3:57pm
Officials with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) today announced the proposed requirements for Stage 2 Meaningful Use and 2014 certification of electronic health records at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society's annual conference in Las Vegas.
The officials said they expected the notices of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) for the two sets of regulations to be published this week in the Federal Register. Following a 60-day comment period, the final rule is scheduled for release this summer.
The Stage 2 Meaningful Use rules and EHR certification standards largely reflect the recommendations made last year [1] by the Health IT Policy Committee and the Health IT Standards Committee, said National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari, speaking to an overflow crowd.
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Clinical quality measures for Meaningful Use Stage 2 still in flux

By kterry
Created Feb 24 2012 - 11:16am
Clinical quality measures are a major focus in both the proposals for Meaningful Use stage 2 and the 2014 EHR certification criteria, government officials told attendees at the Las Vegas meeting of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) this week. But this critical element of Meaningful Use remains in flux. The just published Notice of Proposed Rule Making [1] (NPRM) asks commenters to provide guidance in this area, the officials said.
In general, the proposed rules require eligible professionals (EP) to report on 12 clinical quality measures (CQMs) in Stage 2, twice the number in Stage 1. Hospitals must report on 24 CQMs, up from 15 in Stage 1. They must choose one or more of the CQMs from each of the domains adopted by CMS from the National Quality Strategy.
The uncertainty comes in deciding which of the optional measures EPs must use. In Stage 1, there were three core measures, and EPs could select the other three from a menu. Under one proposal for stage 2, EPs might have to report on 11 core measures and select one from a menu. An alternative proposal would have them choose all 12 measures from the National Quality Strategy domains. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is also seeking input on which measures to include in the final rule.
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HIMSS: Don't Let HIT Obscure Patient Safety Needs

Cheryl Clark, for HealthLeaders Media , February 23, 2012

A record number (36,500) of health information technology wizards, CIOs, and other interested parties are flooding Las Vegas this week for an immersive experience at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society annual conference, HIMSS12.
The event is a backdrop to an innovation avalanche that many believe will both improve access to and quality of healthcare, and reduce its cost.
The miles of exhibits and vendor booths, each touting some form of uniqueness, resemble the endless rows of flashy one-armed bandits we weave through each day. Which ones, if any, will ultimately pay off?
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Sen. Warner calls for tougher standards for electronic medical records

By Julian Pecquet - 02/22/12 04:04 PM ET
Congresss gambit to create a national system of electronic health records is at risk of failure or mediocrity” if federal regulators continue to water down the standards that doctors and hospitals must meet, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) wrote in a letter to federal health officials.
Lawmakers have set aside $27 billion in Medicare and Medicaid incentives for medical providers to switch to paperless records, and 780 products have already been certified under the first stage of the program created by the 2009 stimulus bill. 
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Most Small Healthcare Practices Hacked In The Past 12 Months

Nearly 30 percent say breaches resulted in medical identity theft, new Ponemon report finds
Feb 16, 2012 | 05:53 PM 
By Kelly Jackson Higgins
Dark Reading
If you were wondering how safe your medical records are at your doctor's office, then this might make you sick: Ninety-one percent of small healthcare practices in North America say they have suffered a data breach in the past 12 months.
The survey, conducted by the Ponemon Institute and commissioned by MegaPath, queried more than 700 IT and administrative personnel in healthcare organizations of no more than 250 employees.
Among the findings: Only 31 percent say their management considers data security and privacy a top priority, and 29 percent say their breaches resulted in medical identity theft. "Cybercriminals are hunting for medical records," said Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of Ponemon Institute. "The most serious issue is just the complacency small healthcare providers seem to exhibit with respect to securing patient records."
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Mostashari: 'Breathtaking progress' on EHR front

By Bernie Monegain, Editor
Created 02/23/2012
LAS VEGAS – The results of the health IT incentive program aimed at driving the adoption of electronic health records by hospitals and physicians have been "breathtaking," Farzad Mostashari, MD, asserted in his keynote address at HIMSS12 on Thursday. "We've made more progress in two years than we've made in 20," said Mostashari, national coordinator for health information technology.
He predicted that by next year, the majority of care providers would be doing their work electronically – and not on paper.
“Medicare is leading, but so are the states, so are the private health plans,” he said. “We want to reduce readmissions – there’s an intervention for that. There are interventions for improving quality and they are all part of meaningful use. Making meaningful use of meaningful use can be the road for providers to thrive.
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Kaiser Permanente’s Big EHR Bet Paying Off

If the move toward digitizing the health system has been characterized by fits and starts, Kaiser Permanente’s multi-year, multibillion dollar effort to create an enterprise electronic records system is nothing if not persistent.
During a session at HIMSS12, Kaiser Permanente Senior Vice President and CIO Phil Fasano said with $4 billion spent thus far on the project, the gravity of the undertaking is evident. “Our CEO bet the company on EHRs,” he said. “This is a life-critical system that required a whole other level of attention from our I.T. organization.”
The system is known as KP HealthConnect and is based on software from Epic Systems Corp. A good part of the time and money spent of the project revolved around building an infrastructure to support it. Fasano proudly noted that KP data centers have won awards for their uptime, no small matter considering the anytime/anywhere nature of EHRs. “Investing in infrastructure is something that you can’t overlook,” he said.
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Friday, February 24, 2012

HIMSS12: Officials Stump for Open Data, Consumer Health Tools

LAS VEGAS -- Although most of the 36,526 attendees at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference on Thursday were focused on the release of the proposed rules for Stage 2 of the meaningful use incentive program, two big-name federal health officials -- U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin and HHS Chief Technology Officer Todd Park -- focused on other aspects of health IT.
Park discussed how open data can help spur innovation to improve health and health care, while Benjamin talked about how technology can "bring health to where people are."
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Monday, Feb 20, 2012 10:00 AM AUS Eastern Daylight Time

The coming medical revolution

Technology has the potential to transform our concept of sickness. An expert explains what the future holds

The information at our everyday disposal is growing at a breathtaking rate. From the beginning of civilization to 2003, the world accumulated 1 billion gigabytes of data. Today, we create 1 trillion gigabytes every year. These advances have transformed the way we think about knowledge, communication and countless aspects of our everyday life — and they have the potential to revolutionize the way we think about our own health.
In his new book, “The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care,” Eric Topol, a former professor and researcher at the University of Michigan and Case Western University, and chief academic officer for Scripps Health, a nonprofit healthcare system based in San Diego, argues that the digital revolution can democratize our medical system. Topol demonstrates how the digital revolution can be used to change individual care and  prevention, and even the economics of American healthcare. From cellphones that automatically collect medical data, to biosensors, advanced imaging, individualized prescriptions and gene-specific drugs, Topol’s book leads readers through science-fiction-sounding scenarios that may soon be a reality.
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UKCHIP with everything

The UK Council for Health Informatics Professions, better known as UKCHIP, is ten this year. Linda Davidson talks to Mik Horswell about the ongoing need for the registration of health informatics professionals.
16 February 2012
If you need radiotherapy in the UK, the consultant who prescribes your course of treatment will be registered with and regulated by the General Medical Council.
But the IT person who configures the software to fulfil the prescription and schedule the administration of your treatment is highly unlikely to be registered.
Of course, there are safeguards. Large UK cancer centres are regulated by the Care Quality Commission; they select their staff carefully; and they require them to keep up to date.
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Fridsma: Healthcare communication is not one-size-fits-all

By danb
Created Feb 22 2012 - 1:00am
Doug Fridsma, Director of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT's Office of Standards & Interoperability, says he doesn't believe one-size-fits-all when it comes to healthcare communications efforts. Instead, just like in daily life, comfort is what's most important to each user.
"You find the right tool for the right person," Fridsma said in an exclusive interview with FierceHealthIT this week at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society's annual conference in Las Vegas.
"When you talk to your family, do you use email? Do you use the phone? Do you use Facebook?" he asked. "There's no set way that we communicate with our family, so why would there be just one for the way we communicate with our healthcare community?"
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ONC team lays out transition to permanent EHR certification program

By Frank Irving, PhysBizTech.com
Created 02/22/2012
With the Stage 2 meaningful use proposed rule still waiting in the wings, the certification team from ONC addressed HIMSS12 attendees Wednesday morning, delivering details on the agency’s efforts to move toward a permanent certification program for EHRs.
Steven Posnack, director of ONC’s Federal Policy Division, was notably absent from the presentation, presumably occupied with shaping the Stage 2 proposed rule into releasable form.
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HIMSS and AHIMA introduce free online ICD-10 prep tool

By Diana Manos, Senior Editor
Created 02/21/2012
CHICAGO –  The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) have introduced a free online tool, the ICD-10 Critical Pathway for Getting Started – 2012 and Beyond for use by providers who have not yet begun preparing for ICD-10. 
Developed jointly by HIMSS and AHIMA, the timeline details steps healthcare providers must follow in the next 20 months (February 2012- October 2013) to meet the ICD-10 compliance deadline of October 1, 2013. In a written statement, the two organizations said they have developed these steps to help providers reach the compliance date by following the steps in the critical path tool.
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AHRQ plans registry of patient registries

By Mary Mosquera
Created 2012-02-22 14:07
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality wants to develop a searchable Registry of Patient Registries, which are databases that track the experience of individuals with diseases and conditions, to encourage collaboration and information sharing.
The registry will catalog patient registries in a model similar to http://clinicaltrials.gov/ ClinicalTrials.gov, which lists trials of new therapies for research but does not require listing of patient long-term observational studies. By aligning with ClinicalTrials.gov, the new registry will reduce duplication and foster transparency.
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Health IT Leaders Biggest Worry: Finding Qualified Staff

Hospital CIOs say their biggest concern is lack of qualified health IT professionals, not a lack of funding, HIMSS survey reveals.
By Neil Versel,  InformationWeek
February 21, 2012
For the first time in more than a decade, healthcare CIOs did not name inadequate financial support as their top barrier to implementing IT, according to the annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) survey of hospital-based IT leaders. Instead, lack of staffing resources was the most significant roadblock, named by 21% of the 302 respondents.
Financial issues came in second, at 14%, slightly ahead of vendor inability to deliver a useful product, which 12% of CIOs said was their No. 1 barrier. AdTech Ad
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Nursing Information Officers: Newest Health IT Leaders

Onslaught of health IT initiatives brings a need for nursing Informatics expertise, and a new breed of chief nursing information officers.
By Marianne Kolbasuk McGee,  InformationWeek
February 22, 2012
Does your organization have a chief nursing informatics officer (CNIO)? If not, chances are you'll need one.
The prevalence and role of CNIOs have been on an uptick, especially as hospitals, healthcare systems, and other providers are rolling out health technology for participation in Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act Meaningful Use programs and other initiatives. AdTech Ad
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Positive reaction to MU Stage 2 aside, hard work and challenges ahead

By kterry
Created Feb 22 2012 - 4:00pm
Attendees at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society's annual conference in Las Vegas greeted the announcement today of the proposed rules for Stage 2 Meaningful Use [1] and electronic health record certification with applause. But the actual implementation of these requirements--those that are retained in the final rule, at least--will certainly pose some major challenges to both providers and EHR vendors.
Stage 2 is "hard work, but we can get there, even with ICD-10 and other regulatory requirements," Neal Ganguly, vice president and CIO of CentraState Healthcare System [2] in Freehold, N.J., told FierceHealthIT. CentraState has already attested to Stage 1 Meaningful Use and received its 2011 payment, he noted.
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CMS releases Stage 2 Meaningful Use proposals

By kterry
Created Feb 22 2012 - 3:57pm
Officials with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) today announced the proposed requirements for Stage 2 Meaningful Use and 2014 certification of electronic health records at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society's annual conference in Las Vegas.
The officials said they expected the notices of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) for the two sets of regulations to be published this week in the Federal Register. Following a 60-day comment period, the final rule is scheduled for release this summer.
The Stage 2 Meaningful Use rules and EHR certification standards largely reflect the recommendations made last year [1] by the Health IT Policy Committee and the Health IT Standards Committee, said National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari, speaking to an overflow crowd.
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Query Health to demo 'round trip' at HIMSS12

By Tom Sullivan, Government Health IT
Created 02/21/2012
LAS VEGAS – Michael Buck, PhD, just might be the poster boy for Query Health.
ONC’s distributed querying initiative is gearing up to enable physicians and public health officials to ask simple questions against complex and diverse systems spanning geographic regions to get real-time health data in return – and to do so without building the sort of mammoth data warehouse IBM or Oracle would showcase.
“The real value is if you can get it out quickly,” said Buck, the biomedical informatics R&D manager for the NY Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. “Six months is way faster than building a data warehouse.”
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HIMSS12: VA, DoD 'a force that can move markets'

By Tom Sullivan, Editor
Created 2012-02-21 17:56
The closest thing to a stampede at HIMSS12 occurred as soon as they opened the doors for the joint DoD/VA iEHR panel discussion – as people poured in faster than previous session attendees could swim upstream and out of the room. Even the conference officials furiously adding new rows of chairs couldn’t accommodate the crowd.
“Two competing forces are completely shaping our reality,” said David Wennergren, assistant deputy chief management officer at the Department of Defense said during “A new era in DoD/VA health IT.”
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Press Release
Feb. 21, 2012, 8:30 a.m. EST

Cerner Announces Next Evolution of Cerner Millennium(R)

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Feb 21, 2012 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- Today Cerner CERN +1.16% announced the launch of Millennium+(TM), the next evolution of Cerner Millennium(R). Combining the enterprise platform with the secure Cerner Cloud, Millennium+ delivers a new user experience that is fast, smart and easy. It provides personalized, intuitive and relevant clinical workflows via the desktop, tablet and smartphone.
Cerner understands the importance of health system and community interoperability, which is why Millennium+ integrates and unifies information gathered within the organization and across the community into a provider's workflow. Millennium+ is designed to speed up workflows, reduce clicks and ensure Cerner solutions provide each user the information they need at the right point in the workflow in context of the person, condition and venue.
In addition to Sepsis alerting and Chart Search, one of the first solutions that will be launched as part of the Millennium+ platform is PowerChart+Touch(TM). PowerChart+Touch was created specifically for the iPad. With a swipe of a finger, providers can quickly and easily navigate workflows. As part of the Millennium+ platform, solutions are available on-demand versus relying on major release schedules to access to new capabilities. This provides client organizations, departments and individual users to more quickly adapt to new capabilities, regulatory mandates and quality measurements.
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Cerner announces Millennium next steps

22 February 2012   Jon Hoeksma, in Las Vegas
Cerner has used the HIMSS12 healthcare IT conference and show in Las Vegas to launch Millennium+, the next stage of development of its electronic health record software.
Key features of the next generation of Millennium include the integration of cloud-based services and mobile clinical applications, beginning with PowerChart+ Touch developed specifically for the iPad.
In a press announcement, Cerner says the next evolution of its electronic medical record product combines “the enterprise platform with the secure Cerner cloud.”
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Putting Data in Nurses' Hands

Gienna Shaw, for HealthLeaders Media , February 21, 2012

This article appears in the February 2012 issue of HealthLeaders magazine.
Although the title of chief nursing informatics officer or nurse informaticist isn't exactly commonplace, data is increasingly becoming a part of nurses' day-to-day working lives. Typically the largest employee population, nurses also have the most frequent direct contact with patients. And so getting data into their hands can have a big impact on patient care. 
"Every nurse needs to be able to understand the power of data, because nurses are knowledge workers. We have always collected data and information. So we need to understand the data that's at our fingertips. It's something that every staff nurse should be able to do," says Toni Hebda, PhD, RN, BSN, MNEd, MSIS, a professor in the master of science nursing degree program at Chamberlain College of Nursing, which has campuses in seven states and is headquartered in Downers Grove, IL.
"For us to be adept at what we need to do, we need to be able to work with the technology and use it at the optimal level so that we can reap the benefits, both for our work methods, as well as patient safety and improved outcomes," she says.
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HIMSS Offers State-Level HIT Dashboard

The HIMSS association has developed a dashboard that provides information about HIT activities in each state via a point-and-click map.
The information on the dashboard lists activity in Beacon Communities, self-reporting health information exchanges, and federally supported Regional Extension Centers.
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ICD-10 may not be postponed for everyone

By kterry
Created Feb 20 2012 - 11:12pm
[1]The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) blinked last week [2] on ICD-10, but how long will the agency postpone its deadline? One school of thought is that it will be delayed for a year or two; but CMS' announcement mentioned that only "certain healthcare entities" would be granted a reprieve. Which entities? We don't know yet.
Erica Drazen, managing partner, emerging practices, for CSC Consulting, believes it's possible that CMS will require payers to meet the original deadline of Oct. 1, 2013. That doesn't mean that insurers will stop accepting claims coded in ICD-9 on that date, she told FierceHealthIT. But if they must be ready to accept ICD-10 claims by then, that will make it easier for providers to test their systems as they add ICD-10 capabilities.
Referring to the problematic switchover to the 5010 transaction set, Drazen noted, "One of the challenges with 5010 is that everyone went live on the same day. So there weren't any ways to test with partners [in some cases], because you had to have partners who were ready to test with you."
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One supplier to go for GPES

16 February 2012   Rebecca Todd
The NHS Information Centre appears to be on the verge of having all the major GP clinical systems suppliers signed up to the General Practice Extraction Service.
The NHS IC has signed contracts with four out of five of the main suppliers to extract and communicate data from practices to the information centre via a centrally managed data extraction service.
An NHS IC spokesman said it hoped to come to an agreement with the last supplier, TPP, “shortly” and the company says it expects to have a contract signed within two weeks.
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Where HIE Vendors Should Be Headed

by David J. Kempson

David Kempson, vice president and CIO of the Maricopa Integrated Health System, is negotiating with a health information exchange vendor for a statewide HIE. In the process, he sees the potential for a paradigm shift that could change the health IT landscape.

Across the nation different regions and states—in Arizona’s case, the entire state—are looking at setting up HIEs where none now exist. Bear with me as I look forward into a future where we are able to navigate the political and cost barriers and establish a robust network of data exchangers in our medical trading area. Doesn’t this open up the opportunity for a disruptive technology changing the electronic health record market forever?
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AHIMA, HIMSS reassert ICD-10 vigilance

By Tom Sullivan, Editor
Created 2012-02-20 15:46
LAS VEGAS – “This is a bit ironic today,” Sue Bowman said, pointing to a CMS-borrowed slide stating that the compliance deadline for ICD-10 is October 1, 2013. “The government threw a big curveball toward many presentations.”
Speaking at the HIMSS12 ICD-10 Symposium on Monday morning, Bowman, AHIMA’s director of coding policy and compliance, urged attendees that, even though we do not know when the compliance date will be, it’s best to “stay on course, stay vigilant,” in your ICD-10 planning and implementation.
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ICD-10 Delay No License to Chill

Edward Prewitt, for HealthLeaders Media , February 21, 2012

To healthcare executives charged with meeting the compliance deadline for ICD-10, last week's announcement must have come as sweet relief.  The heavy yoke of the impending deadline was mercifully lifted by Health and Human Services Department Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
The reasons behind the move had less to do with concerns about any technological hurdles than "about the administrative burdens [healthcare providers] face in the years ahead. We are committing to work with the provider community to re-examine the pace at which HHS and the nation implement these important improvements to our healthcare system," Sebelius explained in a media statement.
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Tuesday, February 21, 2012

HIMSS12: Data Will Be Driver of Health Care Change

LAS VEGAS -- The power of data was an overarching theme of the first day of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society's annual conference in Las Vegas.
"This is the golden age of information, and we're going to use it to help people live longer lives and better lives," Lowell Catlett, an economist and futurist, said.
Catlett -- a Regent's professor, dean and chief administrative officer at New Mexico State University -- was the closing keynote speaker at the 2012 CIO Forum, which was jointly presented by HIMSS and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives on Monday as part of HIMSS12.

In HIT, Interoperability Concerns Still Exist

February 16, 2012
According to a survey commissioned by the Eden Prairie, Minn.-based analytic research firm Optum Institute for Sustainable Health (the Optum Institute), healthcare CIOs are concerned about growing costs and burdens related to lack of interoperability between systems, and incomplete data available through health information exchanges
The survey of 301 U.S. hospital CIOs, conducted by Harris Interactive, charted overall progress in digitizing medical care, current health information technology (HIT) capabilities, plans for HIT expansion, stage of "meaningful use" progress, value of interoperability, and benefits and challenges associated with technology use. The biggest concerns were surrounding interoperability.
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2.17.12 | Katie Matlack

3 medical devices for iOS we’d like to see–plus lessons on mHealth app design

There’s a lot of interest in the impact medical peripherals on iOS mobile platforms can have. Used properly, properly designed apps could help catch diseases earlier and make lives of patients easier. As the blogger covering health IT and medical software for Software Advice, I decided to see what it would take to design three apps myself. Through this exercise I learned about the challenges designers in mHealth face that might not be immediately obvious to those of us who’re commenting but lack practical experience. I’ll first discuss the three apps I came up with, before discussing what I learned.
Disease Risk Calculator
Since proteins found in blood can be used as biomarkers to diagnose diseases from type 2 diabetes, to cancer, to HIV, using tests that detect specific biomarkers of diseases long before clinical symptoms arise can lead to earlier treatment, saving lives.
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Mostashari wants more innovators to turn data into tools

February 17, 2012 | Mary Mosquera
WASHINGTON—Dr. Farzad Mostashari, the national health IT coordinator, said more innovators are needed to turn volumes of data contained in electronic health records and other systems into tools for patient care coordination and other hard-to-crack problems.
The adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) is just the first step toward a learning healthcare system that will produce a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement with the build-out of a nationwide electronic infrastructure.
It will take “an army of people to push this grand democratization of data” in clinical information systems for better quality and population improvement and to move research more quickly out from benchmarking institutions into experiments and then rapid implementations, he said.
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Sebelius says $3.1B paid out for EHR incentives

By Mary Mosquera
Created 2012-02-17 14:44
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that 2,000 hospitals and 41,000 physicians have received $3.1 billion in incentive payments for the meaningful use of certified electronic health records (EHRs).
Sebelius’ report on the most up-to-the-minute stats on the EHR incentive program sets the scene for the imminent release of the meaningful use stage 2 proposed rule.
“Health IT is the foundation for a truly 21st century health system where we pay for the right care, not just more care,” she said Feb. 17 at Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley Health Science Institute in Kansas City, Mo., where she discussed the growth of health IT professional jobs to improve patient outcomes and the economy.
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Pocket Physio app launched

14 February 2012  
UK Specialist Hospitals has launched a physiotherapy app to help patients recover after hip or knee surgery.
The independent healthcare provider is part of the NHS Partners Network, and operates five treatment centres in the South West, has carried out almost 10,000 joint replacements for the NHS.
It has made the Pocket Physio app freely available for all patients with an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.
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FairWarning announces 2011 milestones

By Jamie Thompson, Web Editor
Created 02/02/2012
FairWarning, supplier of cross-platform healthcare privacy auditing solutions for EHRs, has announced its 2011 milestones. FairWarning solutions are now in use in over 800 hospitals and 2,500 clinics across the U.K., United States, Canada and France.
NHS Scotland selected FairWarning for every board throughout Scotland as well as privacy protection for the country’s HIE and Emergency Care Summary. HCA International, London’s top private hospital group, has chosen FairWarning Privacy Breach Detection to enhance patient privacy.
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NHS announces launch of clinical portal

By Jamie Thompson, Web Editor
Created 02/15/2012
The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust has announced the go-live of its clinical portal across the trust. Patient information will be stored on a variety of systems, and can be accessed in a single view in real-time. CSC collaborated with Carefx to deploy the portal.
“The portal gives clinicians an electronic patient record which provides us with a simple, clear and instant view of the essential information we need, on a single screen,” said Chris Walker, trauma and orthopedic consultant at the trust. “This is already bringing benefits to both the patients and clinicians as it ensures we have access to the correct patient information when we need it, before, during and after a consultation or procedure. In addition, less time is wasted trying to sort through and decipher paper notes.
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Enjoy!
David.

Friday, March 02, 2012

The US Approach To Meaningful Use of Health IT is Being Expanded. It is Pretty Amazing Stuff!

Late last week the update to the US EHR Incentive Program was announced - towards the end of the HIMSS Conference.
Here is a bit of a roundup of some links.
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Here is the formal Government Press Release:

Secretary Sebelius Announces Next Stage For Providers Adopting Electronic Health Records

Friday, February 24, 2012
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced the next steps for providers who are using electronic health record (EHR) technology and receiving incentive payments from Medicare and Medicaid.  These proposed rules, from the Centers for Medicaid & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), will govern stage 2 of the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record Incentive Programs.
“We know that broader adoption of electronic health records can save our health care system money, save time for doctors and hospitals, and save lives,” said Secretary Sebelius.  “We have seen great success and momentum as we’ve taken the first steps toward adoption of this critical technology.  As we move into the next stage, we are encouraging even more providers to participate and support more coordinated, patient-centered care.”
Under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, eligible health care professionals and hospitals can qualify for Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments when they adopt certified EHR technology and use it in a meaningful way. What is considered “meaningful use” is evolving in three stages:
  • Stage 1 (which began in 2011 and remains the starting point for all providers): “meaningful use” consists of transferring data to EHRs and being able to share information, including electronic copies and visit summaries for patients.
  • Stage 2 (to be implemented in 2014 under the proposed rule): “meaningful use” includes new standards such as online access for patients to their health information, and electronic health information exchange between providers.
  • Stage 3 (expected to be implemented in 2016): “meaningful use” includes demonstrating that the quality of health care has been improved.               
CMS’ proposed rule specifies the stage 2 criteria that eligible providers must meet in order to qualify for Medicare and/or Medicaid EHR incentive payments. It also specifies Medicare payment adjustments that, beginning in 2015, providers will face if they fail to demonstrate meaningful use of certified EHR technology and fail to meet other program participation requirements.  In a November 2011 “We Can’t Wait” announcement (http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2011pres/11/20111130a.html), the Department outlined plans to provide an additional year for providers who attested to meaningful use in 2011.   Under today’s proposed rule, stage 1 has been extended an additional year, allowing providers to attest to stage 2 in 2014, instead of in 2013. The proposed rule announced by ONC identifies standards and criteria for the certification of EHR technology, so eligible professionals and hospitals can be sure that the systems they adopt are capable of performing the required functions to demonstrate either stage of meaningful use that would be in effect starting in 2014.
“Through the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs, we’ve seen incredible progress as over 43,000 providers have received $3.1 billion to help make the transition to electronic health records,” said CMS Acting Administrator Marilyn Tavenner. “There is great momentum as the number of providers adopting this technology grows every month.  Today’s announcement will help ensure broad participation and success of the program, as we move toward full adoption of this money-saving and life-saving technology.”
“The proposed rules for stage 2 for meaningful use and updated certification criteria largely reflect the recommendations from the Health IT Policy and Standards Committees, the federal advisory committees that operate through a transparent process with broad public input from all key stakeholders. Their recommendations emphasized the desire to increase health information exchange, increase patient and family engagement, and better align reporting requirements with other HHS programs,” said Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. “The proposed rules announced today will continue down the path stage 1 established by focusing on value-added ways in which EHR systems can help providers deliver care which is more coordinated, safer, patient-centered, and efficient.”
The number of hospitals using EHRs has more than doubled in the last two years from 16 to 35 percent between 2009 and 2011.  Eighty-five percent of hospitals now report that by 2015 they intend to take advantage of the incentive payments.
A technical fact sheet on CMS’s proposed rule is available at http://www.cms.gov/apps/media/fact_sheets.asp.
A technical fact sheet on ONC’s standards and certification criteria proposed rule is available at http://www.healthit.gov/policy-research.
The proposed rules announced today may be viewed at www.ofr.gov/inspection.aspx. Comments are due 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.
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Here are some reports on all of the material.

CMS releases meaningful use proposed rule

By Mary Mosquera
Created 2012-02-23 17:52
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has laid out the details for how it will raise the bar for healthcare providers to qualify for incentives with the release Feb. 23 of its proposed rule for Stage 2 of meaningful use of electronic health records.
Among its provisions, CMS will delay the start of Stage 2 until 2014 instead of 2013.
As expected, the next stage of meaningful use builds on the criteria of the first stage, including increasing the threshold for performance of existing measures and pushing providers to actually exchange information in various transactions to drive continuous quality improvement.
In Stage 2, CMS said it would keep the same core-menu structure for required measures. Physicians will meet 17 core objectives and three of five menu options. Hospitals will meet 16 core measures and two of four menu options. 
Note: This link has a great summary of the proposed requirements for 2014.
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CMS Stage 2 Rule: No Provider Mandate, But Higher Emphasis on Encryption

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ proposed rule for Stage 2 of the electronic health records meaningful use program does not mandate use of encryption, but it does emphasize increased consideration of encryption of data at rest in ambulatory and inpatient EHR systems.
Stage 1 meaningful use security requirements rely on HIPAA security rule provisions under federal code 45 CFR. Under HIPAA, encryption is an “addressable” specification, meaning a covered entity decides if it is a “reasonable and appropriate” technical security step to implement. The security rule enables an entity to adopt an alternative protective measure that achieves the same purpose if the alternative is reasonable and appropriate.
In the Stage 2 proposed rule, CMS specifically calls out the issue of encryption at rest and heightens the importance of analyzing the pros and cons of using the technology.
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New Meaningful-Use Rules Stress Online Contact With Patients

Robert Lowes
February 23, 2012 — Physicians will need to communicate with patients online to satisfy new and tougher federal rules for "meaningful use" of electronic health records (EHRs), earn 5-figure bonuses, and avoid a penalty down the line.
Under proposed regulations released today by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), physicians must receive "secure messages," an encrypted form of email, from more than 10% of patients seen. In addition, they must give patients timely electronic access to their healthcare information.
The new requirements will not take effect until 2014.
Last year, CMS began awarding bonuses under Medicare and Medicaid to physicians who meet an initial set of meaningful use requirements designed to improve the quality of care. There are currently 25 stage 1 objectives, 15 of which are mandatory and 10 elective. The mandatory objectives include electronically prescribing more than 40% of prescriptions and recording demographic information, such as date of birth, sex, and race, as structured data for more than 50% of patients seen. Physicians must satisfy any 5 of the 10 elective requirements.
In stage 2, the number of mandatory objectives increases to 17, with physicians able to choose 3 of 5 elective objectives. Almost all of the stage 1 mandatory and elective objectives graduated to stage 2, with a few of them combined for simplicity's sake.
The stage 2 requirements raise the bar for digital doctoring that the federal government will reward. For starters, stage 2 thresholds for carryovers from stage 1 are more demanding. Meaningful users, for example, must e-prescribe more than 65% of their prescriptions (increased from 40%), and the threshold for recording demographic data goes up to more than 80% of patients.
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Clinical quality measures for Meaningful Use Stage 2 still in flux

By kterry
Created Feb 24 2012 - 11:16am
Clinical quality measures are a major focus in both the proposals for Meaningful Use stage 2 and the 2014 EHR certification criteria, government officials told attendees at the Las Vegas meeting of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) this week. But this critical element of Meaningful Use remains in flux. The just published Notice of Proposed Rule Making [1] (NPRM) asks commenters to provide guidance in this area, the officials said.
In general, the proposed rules require eligible professionals (EP) to report on 12 clinical quality measures (CQMs) in Stage 2, twice the number in Stage 1. Hospitals must report on 24 CQMs, up from 15 in Stage 1. They must choose one or more of the CQMs from each of the domains adopted by CMS from the National Quality Strategy.
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The good news is that the reaction to what is planned seems pretty positive:

Positive reaction to MU Stage 2 aside, hard work and challenges ahead

By kterry
Created Feb 22 2012 - 4:00pm
Attendees at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society's annual conference in Las Vegas greeted the announcement today of the proposed rules for Stage 2 Meaningful Use [1] and electronic health record certification with applause. But the actual implementation of these requirements--those that are retained in the final rule, at least--will certainly pose some major challenges to both providers and EHR vendors.
Stage 2 is "hard work, but we can get there, even with ICD-10 and other regulatory requirements," Neal Ganguly, vice president and CIO of CentraState Healthcare System [2] in Freehold, N.J., told FierceHealthIT. CentraState has already attested to Stage 1 Meaningful Use and received its 2011 payment, he noted.
The Stage 2 Meaningful Use rules and EHR certification standards largely reflect the recommendations made last year by the Health IT Policy Committee and the Health IT Standards Committee, National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari told the overflow crowd.
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Comment:
This is important ground breaking work I believe, where financial incentives  are progressively being linked to using e-Health IT to make a serious difference to patient outcomes.
Hardly what is being done with the PCEHR I have to say!
There were a good number of Australians at HIMSS - they know about all this material so why are our heads so firmly placed looking in the rear mirror?
I wish I knew!
David.