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NHS maps out 100K genomes medicine plans
8 July 2014 Lis Evenstad
NHS England expects to have contracts in place with providers by January 2015 for its ambitious project to sequence 100,000 genomes and link the results with a national database of electronic patient records.
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt launched the project to sequence 100,000 human genomes and link these to electronic patient records in June last year.
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New informatics program for pathologists
Posted on Jul 11, 2014
By Mike Miliard, Managing Editor
The College of American Pathologists, along with the Association of Pathology Chairs and the Association for Pathology Informatics, has launched a new graduate medical education curriculum for clinical informatics.
Pathology Informatics Essentials for Residents is meant to prepare pathologists for an evolving healthcare landscape where electronic health records are changing the way providers interact with lab data.
"Training pathology residents in clinical informatics is 'a must' to build the skills required now and in the future," said APC President-Elect Donald S. Karcher, MD, chairman of the Department of Pathology at George Washington University in Washington, DC, in a press statement. "We designed PIER with the residency programs in mind and have created a flexible curriculum, which can be integrated throughout residency training."
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Clinical informatics: data in action
Posted on Jul 11, 2014
By John Andrews, Contributing Writer
If there is one emerging pattern within the clinical informatics field, it is the quest to make data "actionable" for users. With all the technology infrastructure development over the past decade to facilitate electronic health record installation in healthcare facilities, providers are finding that the data generated often can't be used in a timely and constructive manner.
The obstacle to achieving this level of manageability, summed up succinctly by Dan Riskin, MD, is this: "It's hard." Riskin, co-founder and CEO of Menlo Park, Calif.-based Health Fidelity, may be a bit glib about the challenge of harnessing the magic of clinical data, but he says the juncture where healthcare finds itself requires more deep contemplation about how to proceed from here.
In explaining the high degree of complexity involved in transforming clinical data from being an inert body into a vehicle for quality care, Riskin dissects the challenge this way: "The problem fits into two buckets – risk and quality. Risk is a market need today for value-based healthcare in risk-based payment models and requires a fundamental understanding of what it means. There is also a lot of talk about quality and the same technology is needed for both. The base content is full clinical data – claims data plus narrative data. This is complete clinical data, providing the full picture."
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http://www.healthcare-informatics.com/news-item/ehr-implementation-still-troubling-docs-survey-finds
EHR Implementation Still Troubling Docs, Survey Finds
July 10, 2014 by Rajiv Leventhal
Electronic health record (EHR) adoption and implementation issues were ranked as the most pressing IT problems by physicians for the second straight year, according to the Physicians Practice 2014 Technology Survey.
As more physicians and medical practices work toward meaningful use of an EHR, getting the technology seamlessly integrated into daily work flow continues to be a main concern. Seventeen percent of the 1,442 respondents to this year's survey said getting an EHR onboard and fully operational at their practice was their top concern, followed closely by lack of interoperability between EHRs (16 percent) and costs to implement and use new technology (13 percent). It does seem, however, due to meaningful use incentive payments or other factors, that cost is becoming less of a concern, having dropped 4 percentage points from the 2013 survey.
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Predictive analytics in healthcare: Are they safe?
July 11, 2014 | By Dan Bowman
While hospitals--such as Boston Children's Hospital and El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, California--increasingly are turning to predictive analytics to improve patient care and safety efforts, some worry about the legal and ethical implications of using such technology.
For instance, researchers from Harvard Law School, the University of California, San Francisco and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center say in an article published this month in Health Affairs that predictive analytics models may make care recommendations that suggest withholding potentially effective treatments from patients based on probability statistics. What's more, they say, docs who rely on such models could face an increased risk of liability.
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HIT safety barriers for hospitals include staffing, funds
July 11, 2014 | By Dan Bowman
Health technology safety efforts often are forced to compete with other "priorities" at provider organizations, including business growth and quality of service, according to a recent research report from RAND and the ECRI Institute published on behalf of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. The report was touted in a July 10 Health IT Buzz blog post and involved 11 organizations and six case studies.
The report's authors found that securing resources--both in terms of staff effort and funding--has been the "most frequently cited barrier" to the success of health IT safety efforts. For instance, they noted, in many cases examined, employees charged with health IT safety maintenance divided their time between managing risk and working on Meaningful Use or the ICD-10 transition.
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Patient portals raise concerns for data privacy, security
July 11, 2014 | By Katie Dvorak
As more health data becomes available, many issues will arise regarding patient security and privacy of information, Micky Tripathi tells Healthcare Information Security in an interview.
One of the biggest privacy issues, according to Tripathi, who co-chairs the Privacy and Security Tiger Team, which advises the HIT Policy Committee of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, is sharing of patient information on patient portals--and who has access to what data through them.
Tripathi also serves as president and CEO of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative.
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6 ways big data can lower costs
Posted on Jul 10, 2014
By Mike Miliard, Managing Editor
Brigham and Women's Hospital has put forth a new report showcasing a half-dozen ways to lower healthcare costs through the use of big data.
With electronic health records now common across the U.S., the amount of clinical data ripe for research and analytics is on the rise. This is opening big opportunities to arrive at insights that could improve the value of patient care, say B&W officials.
A new study published in the July issue of Health Affairs shows how big data analytics is helping pave the way toward reduced costs.
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Patient-centered data opens door for more individualized care, research
July 10, 2014 | By Katie Dvorak
More than ever, patients are having a say in their healthcare--and their input will be an important part of big data collection to create a more "unified story of health and healthcare," according to an article in July's Health Affairs.
Researchers at Duke University looked at the impact of aggregating real-world data right from patients as an alternative to randomized controlled trials. The researchers said directly capturing patient data is growing, with the information being used to help physicians understand the factors that affect health outcomes.
The researchers said that as the use of electronic health records and monitoring devices grows, it opens more doors for data collection and analysis. Full implementation and interoperability of EHRs remains a work in progress for many providers, however.
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Docs cite EHRs as top IT concern; shun telehealth, social media
July 10, 2014 | By Katie Dvorak
When it comes to implementing electronic health records into daily workflow, 17 percent of physicians responding to a newly published survey say it is their top IT concern.
For the second straight year, the adoption of EHRs is the most pressing tech problem physicians face, according to the Physicians Practice 2014 Technology Survey, conducted by Kareo.
Of the 1,442 respondents to the survey, lack of interoperability between EHRs also was a pressing issue--with 16 percent calling it a major concern, according to an announcement on the study.
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Why Hackers Are Targeting Health Data
CIO: 'Today It's a Totally Different Kind of Attack'
Two years ago, a Utah Department of Health server was breached, allegedly by Eastern European hackers, and 780,000 individuals were impacted.
Last month, the Montana health department confirmed a server breach impacting up to 1.3 million individuals.
And now the State of Vermont confirms that a development server of the Vermont Health Connect, the state's health insurance exchange under the Affordable Care Act, experienced a cyberattack last December, in which hackers allegedly accessed data 15 times. The attack, which was tracked to a Romanian IP address, went undetected for about a month.
In this latest case, because the server was only a development system that did not contain any production data, there was no breach, Lawrence Miller, Vermont's chief of healthcare reform, tells Information Security Media Group.
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'Most Wired' 2014 hospitals big on data
Posted on Jul 09, 2014
By Mike Miliard, Managing Editor and Erin McCann, Associate Editor
This year's class of 'Most Wired' hospitals are diving "deeper into data analytics and population health management," according to Hospitals & Health Networks.
The 16th annual survey, conducted by H&HN in partnership with the American Hospital Association, CHIME, McKesson and AT&T, finds that these 375 organizations are also using information technology to bridge gaps to outpatient providers, the report finds. In addition to highlighting the Most Wired, HHN also recognized hospitals in the 'Most Improved,' 'Small and Rural' and 'Most Wired Advanced' categories (see next page.)
Two-thirds of the hospitals on the list share critical patient information electronically with specialists and other care providers.
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CMS reports paltry numbers for Stage 2
Posted on Jul 09, 2014
By Tom Sullivan, Editor, Government Health IT
When CMS and ONC revealed the latest statistics on Tuesday morning, showing that 1 percent of eligible providers and 3 percent of eligible hospitals have attested to Stage 2 to date, Elisabeth Myers of CMS' Office of e-Health Standards and Services was careful to point out that the data is early -- so much so, in fact, that “it’s dangerous to apply interpretations” to those numbers.
The 1 percent figure includes EPs who have installed a 2014-certified EHR by Jan. 1 of this year, completed the reporting period ending April 1, and attested as of July 1. That's an aggressive timeline for healthcare entities so naturally the first wave was small, though few expected it to be as low as 1 and 3 percent.
CMS will start seeing second quarter attestations coming in July 1, Myers added. Whereas previous years' reporting periods could be conducted in any 90-day stretch, 2014 is the first time CMS required it to be done according to calendar quarters.
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Crafting a Next Generation IT strategy
Posted on Jul 09, 2014
By John Halamka, CareGroup Health System, Life as a Healthcare CIO
During my 16 years as CIO, I've witnessed the transition from client server to web, from desktops to mobile, and from locally hosted to cloud.
As Beth Israel Deaconess merges and acquires more hospitals, more practices and more care management capabilities, what are its strategic IT choices?
I will not even mention "best of breed", because I think the industry has abandoned such a strategy as unworkable in an era when everyone needs access to everything for care coordination, population health, and patient/family engagement.
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Hopkins Tweaks CPOE, Saves $1.25 Million
Greg Goth
JUL 8, 2014 9:25am ET
Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Baltimore, used two relatively simple tactics to significantly reduce the number of unnecessary blood tests to assess symptoms of heart attack and chest pain, and to achieve a large decrease in patient charges.
The team provided information about testing guidelines and made changes to the computerized physician order entry system at the medical center, part of the Johns Hopkins Health System. The guidelines call for more limited use of blood tests for cardiac biomarkers. A year after implementation, the guidelines saved the medical center an estimated $1.25 million in laboratory charges.
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Electronic transmission: not so simple
Posted on Jul 09, 2014
By Mike Miliard, Managing Editor
On paper, it sounds easy. Eligible hospitals that refer patients to another care setting must electronically transmit "a summary of care record for more than 10 percent of such transitions and referrals."
The twelfth of Stage 2 meaningful use's 16 core measures requires that such a summary of care be either transmitted to another recipient using certified electronic health record technology, or with help from an organization that's either an "NwHIN Exchange participant or (operates in) a manner that is consistent with the governance mechanism ONC establishes for the nationwide health information network."
Turns out that's easier said than done.
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Health Affairs - July 2014; Volume 33, Issue 7
Using Big Data To Transform Care
From The Editor-in-Chief
Big Data In Health: A New Era For Research And Patient Care
- Alan R. Weil
Health Aff July 2014 33:1110; doi:10.1377/hlthaff.2014.0689
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Big data tools help CMS transform healthcare
July 9, 2014 | By Jane Antonio
New developments in data architecture, storage and analysis are helping the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services make better use of data to transform the healthcare system, according to a new article outlining the agency's efforts published this month in Health Affairs. CMS is using technology to convert mountains of raw data into actionable information and share it securely.
In the past, it was difficult for CMS to manage the high volumes of data it collects since such data often is housed in incompatible systems, the authors--including CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner and Acting Director of CMS' Offices of Enterprise Management Niall Brennan--noted. Types of data contained include Medicare and Medicaid claims information, patient assessments and surveys along with data on quality, Medicare Advantage encounters and prescription drug events. Now, however, CMS can integrate its systems "to link billions of transactional data records from disparate sources at the desired unit of analysis (such as the beneficiary or the provider) and look across time and programs," the authors said. That, they added, yields a more holistic view of patients and providers in various care settings over time.
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ONC committee endorses Health IT Safety Center
July 9, 2014 | By Dan Bowman
Governance, function and focus recommendations for a proposed Health IT Safety Center presented by a safety task force on behalf of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT won the endorsement of the agency's Health IT Policy Committee on Tuesday.
At the committee's monthly meeting, the task force--chaired by David Bates, senior vice president for quality and safety at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston--called for a public/private governance structure funded both by the ONC and via private means. It also reiterated the need for the center's activities to simultaneously avoid duplication and complement ongoing efforts, key tenets of the proposed health IT risk-based regulatory framework from which the safety center has materialized.
Another recommendation from the task force included the creation of an executive board comprised of 10 to 12 "decision-making" members that, within two years, could expand to be a larger, more inclusive entity. The board would include representation from all parts of the health IT spectrum, including consumers, hospital IT leaders and vendor institutions.
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Mt. Sinai offers iPads to patients to track their stay
New York City-based Mt. Sinai Medical Center has begun offering iPads to patients to keep track of their hospital stay. The central feature of the app, Patient Itinerary, allows patients to stay informed about when they are scheduled for surgeries, lab tests, and consultations.
“If you have a patient that’s here for five or six days, they really don’t know what’s going to be happen during the course of their day,” Michael DeCarlo, director of health IT at Mt. Sinai, told MobiHealthNews. “So that was really the driver behind creating the patient itinerary.”
The Mayo Clinic implemented a similar pilot in an outpatient context for patients recovering from heart surgery. That app included an assessment component, but also equipped users with a schedule and to-do list for the day. DeCarlo said that pilot was an inspiration for Mt. Sinai, but that they’re applying the same ideas to an inpatient context. Currently, about 50 iPads are deployed across six units in the hospital.
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The 4 Health Systems With the Most Stage 7 Hospitals
In total, 172 hospitals have been recognized HIMSS Analytics' Stage 7 Award, the highest level of electronic medical record progress a hospital or health system can attain.
Many of these 172 hospitals are part of larger health systems. The following four health systems boast the largest numbers of stage 7 hospitals:
Kaiser Permanente (Oakland, Calif.): 37 hospitals
Banner Health (Phoenix): 21 hospitals
Banner Health (Phoenix): 21 hospitals
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Millions of Electronic Medical Records Breached
July 7, 2014
This story first appeared in the Orange County Register and the Los Angeles Register.
Thieves, hackers and careless workers have breached the medical privacy of nearly 32 million Americans, including 4.6 million Californians, since 2009.
Those numbers, taken from new U.S. Health & Human Services Department data, underscore a vulnerability of electronic health records.
These records are more detailed than most consumer credit or banking files and could open the door to widespread identity theft, fraud, or worse.
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Advanced EHRs Save 10% Per Patient, Study Says
John Commins, for HealthLeaders Media , July 9, 2014
A large study of electronic health records systems, which includes automation of ancillary services such as clinical data repository, pharmacy, and laboratories, shows that they save money for third-party payers and patients, but not necessarily for hospitals.
A sweeping examination of more than 5 million inpatient records at 550 hospitals during 2009 identified savings averaging 9.6% per patient – or $731 – from the 19% of hospitals that used advanced electronic health records when compared with hospitals that did not.
The findings from researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston were published in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Managed Care. Abby Swanson Kazley, an associate professor at MUSC's college of Health Professions, and a lead author of the study, spoke with HealthLeaders Media Tuesday.
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Patient Engagement Platform Sees Explosive Growth
Greg Goth
JUL 8, 2014 7:19am ET
"Patient engagement" is a popular term currently, but the practice of providing consumers with relevant data about the clinical and financial aspects of their care is still in its infancy. Health Data Management talked with Doug Ghertner, CEO of Nashville-based engagement and education platform vendor Change Healthcare, about what the industry needs to do to tie users, providers, and payers together on applications everybody can understand and make use of.
If the statistics behind the firm's growth are any indication, it would appear employers and health plans are more than ready to provide such platforms to their consumers. Ghertner says Change Healthcare started 2013 with 200,000 users on the company's Software-as-a-Service platform; by year's end there were 5.5 million, and by early June, 2014, 7.7 million.
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ONC Launches Challenge for Improving Hypertension
Greg Slabodkin
JUL 8, 2014 7:36am ET
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has a new challenge to providers: To develop electronic health records tools to improve treatment of hypertension.
The goal of the EHR Innovations for Improving Hypertension Challenge is to “seek practices that have used clinical decision support (CDS) to implement the most clinically successful examples of an evidence-based blood pressure treatment protocol, gather details about these tools and their implementation, and then drive widespread implementation of those tools by other providers.”
The ONC-led challenge is part of Million Hearts, a national initiative to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes by 2017. “Heart disease and stroke are two of the leading causes of death in the U.S. and there are many healthcare providers who employ clinical decision support tools, like standardized treatment approaches or protocols to control hypertension among their patients. This challenge helps us find the best examples of those efforts and scale them up,” says National HIT Coordinator Karen DeSalvo, M.D.
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Top 10 Government Health IT stories of 2014 thus far
By Tom Sullivan, Editor
When setting out to assemble this lineup it was, but perhaps should not have been, surprising that even after weeding out now-old news articles that have lost relevancy half of the top 10 most popular stories would be about ICD-10.
Other favorite topics this year include accountable care organizations, Big Data, interoperability, patient privacy issues.
And here they are:
1. Commentary: A 4-step approach to interoperability
2. The dark side of the bill pushing back ICD-10, SGR
3. ICD-10: The day after
4. ICD-10: This just isn’t how the deal should go down
5. Unintended consequences of ICD-10 delay
2. The dark side of the bill pushing back ICD-10, SGR
3. ICD-10: The day after
4. ICD-10: This just isn’t how the deal should go down
5. Unintended consequences of ICD-10 delay
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CDC on EHR errors: Enough's enough
Posted on Jul 08, 2014
By Evan Schuman, Contributing Writer
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not routinely get involved in telling hospitals how to run operations, but with increasing reports of EHR deployment problems, the Atlanta-based operation now sees the need to act.
"Some hospital laboratories have legacy information systems that do not even have the ability to use current coding," said Megan Sawchuk, the lead health scientist for CDC's office of public health scientific services, which is in the division of laboratory programs, standards and services.
The problems, though, go way beyond outdated software. There are also issues involving staff time and expertise. One key example is the huge number of codes and the maddening fact that different medical facilities use different codes for the same tests. This is particularly problematic for physicians who work in multiple hospitals and practices. "We have to develop a simpler coding system that balances the clinician’s need to consistently order the right test with the laboratory’s need to show unique aspects of testing when necessary," Sawchuk said. "There are pros and cons on each side, but ultimately we want to make it easy for clinicians to order and interpret the right test for the patient."
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HIT stakeholders raise concerns with FDASIA framework
July 8, 2014 | By Dan Bowman
Several healthcare industry groups are raising concerns in new comments submitted this week to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about the health IT risk-based regulatory framework it published in April in conjunction with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and the Federal Communications Commission.
For instance, the American Hospital Association, in a letter to Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, remarks that the report only distinguishes various types of health IT based on "descriptions of the technology as it is currently used." The AHA also worries that the "functional approach" within the report fails to capture three important facets of health IT: interoperability of information across data sources; product usability; and accurate patient matching.
"We recommend that the final report include all three of these factors as considerations in the assessment of health IT by level of risk," the letter states.
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Report: CPOE market poised for growth
Laura Pedulli
Jul 07, 2014
The computerized physician order entry (CPOE) market is expected to grow 6.5 percent, or from $938.4 million in 2013 to $1.28 billion in 2018, according to a report from Texas-based research firm MicroMarket Monitor.
Government initiatives are spurring a number of technological advancements in CPOE and extensive usage of CPOE systems by emergency healthcare service providers, hospitals, nurses and office-based physicians also is fueling market growth, according to the report.
Key market players include Cerner, Allscripts, Epic, McKesson, GE Healthcare, Athenahealth, Meditech, Zynx Health and Emdeon.
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MU Slides into Summer of Discontent
Scott Mace, for HealthLeaders Media , July 8, 2014
If the top dog in the EHR food chain is feeling like he is dragging regulatory chains around, then we have a technology modernization program that is, at best, troubled, and at worst, in crisis.
The federal government's EHR certification program is in disarray and may not be able to achieve its most important outstanding aim—to provide interoperability between different vendors' EHRs—anytime soon.
This despite CMS's meaningful use audit program striking terror in the hearts of even the staunchest healthcare CIOs, who fear an overlooked detail will lead to hefty givebacks of EHR incentive payments.
ONC's distracting effort to push forward with a 2015 set of EHR standards itself has generated a massive amount of negative feedback, and accusations that the organization hasn't incorporated three years of extensive public feedback into a troubled program. Now the program is facing considerable budgetary limitations as its original Congressional funding runs out.
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Hospital IT execs: Patient safety results should define CPOE success
July 7, 2014 | By Dan Bowman
The success of a computerized physician order entry implementation project should be defined by improvements to patient safety, according to Chris Snyder, a hospitalist and chief medical information officer at Peninsula Regional Medical Center, a 288-bed acute-care facility in Salisbury, Maryland.
Snyder (pictured right), who spoke on the recent FierceHealthIT webinar "Boosting physician adoption of CPOE to maximize its benefits," said that while adoption is challenging, it ultimately opens up doors for stronger governance structures. That, in turn, leads to faster decision-making, which boosts the quality of patient care, he said.
"The speed of it is remarkable," said Snyder, whose rural facility first implemented CPOE 10 years ago and is about to make another transition. "The capability to visualize information and to stop the Swiss-cheese model before it gets to the pharmacy--before it gets to the nurse and definitely before it gets to the patient--has shown to be enormous at our institution."
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CMS Seeks Mandated Certified EHRs for Chronic Care
JUL 6, 2014 10:42pm ET
The government is proposing that physician practices furnishing chronic care management services to Medicare beneficiaries use electronic health records certified to at least 2014 Edition meaningful use requirements.
The meaningful use program has been voluntary, although eligible professionals not participating face reduced Medicare reimbursements. The program remains voluntary, but the possibility now looms that an exception may be made for chronic care.
The possible mandate of certified EHRs to care for the chronically ill is in a proposed rule setting the Part B physician fee schedule for calendar year 2015. The rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is available here and being published July 11 in the Federal Register.
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Navigating the Intersection of Medical Devices, Health IT To Boost Patient Safety
Monday, July 7, 2014
One of the many Holy Grails in health care -- trailing somewhat behind the perennial pursuit of lower costs -- is the notion of interlinking the sometimes disparate components of medical devices, clinical systems, information systems and communication platforms to streamline care and make the entire delivery universe safer for patients.
We're getting closer, but because of the notoriously fragmented arena that constitutes the U.S. health care system, progress is, well, painstakingly slow. The good news is that the parties that need to be invested in making this interconnectedness happen are talking -- and collaborating.
These parties include device makers and information system vendors, FDA, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, the Federal Communications Commission, standard-setting bodies and a slew of interested independent organizations. The latter group ranges from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society to the ECRI Institute, and from the MD PnP (Medical Device Plug-and-Play) workgroup to the recently formed Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) and CE-IT Community. All are engaged, separately or jointly, in efforts to propel device-and-system interoperability while improving health IT-associated patient safety.
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Enjoy!
David.
