April 9, 2012
news
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has posted the clinical quality measures for Stage 2 under meaningful use of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act/Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (ARRA/HITECH). This comes approximately one month after CMS posted the proposed rules for Stage 2 around the HIMSS12 conference.
April 5, 2012 David Raths
news
The Health IT Policy Committee plans to submit its response to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ meaningful use Stage 2 Notice of Proposed Rule-Marking (NPRM) by May 7. At its April 4 meeting it heard from several of its work groups about suggested tweaks and recommendations. Paul Tang, M.D., of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, and Columbia University’s George Hripcsak, M.D., co-chairs of the meaningful use work group, addressed several key issues.
April 4, 2012
blog
I find it ironic that after investing money and effort in an EMR implementation, many organizations are still handing out paper forms to collect history, insurance updates and HIPAA acknowledgements.
April 4, 2012
blog
I don’t understand why application vendors place little importance on reporting requirements. I get the fact that customers like to customize their reports, but why not make that an inherent feature? Maybe that is why the market is constantly creating so many 3rd party Business Intelligence (BI) vendors. But what about Clinical Intelligence (CI) requirements?
April 3, 2012 Healthcare Informatics Editors
article
As spring sprung to life across the U.S., the healthcare IT world furthered the debate over the recently unveiled Stage 2 of meaningful use. Clearly, interoperability is on the minds of many. Meanwhile, tablets in healthcare continue to generate discussion, as they find their ways into hospitals, whether CIOs like it or not. In addition, HCI’s yearly Top Tech Trends was a popular read, as was an article on clinical alerts, which has become a growing problem for physicians.
April 2, 2012 Mark Hagland
article
CSC's Erica Drazen shares exclusively with HCI's Editor-in-Chief Mark Hagland her analysis of, and detailed figures on, the very large number of healthcare reform- and meaningful use-related deadlines facing hospitals and physicians in the several years. The bottom line: very, very few in the industry realize either the sheer volume or the level of complexity of these overlapping deadlines and time-sensitive requirements.
March 19, 2012 David Raths
blog
The patient engagement measure that requires that 10 percent of patients actually have to look at their data, download it, or transmit it to others isn't sitting well with providers.
March 12, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
blog
I was talking to Robin Raiford, R.N., research director and part of the meaningful use navigator team at The Advisory Board, the other day about some of the biggest challenges of Stage 2 meaningful use. What she mentioned, and what’s not surprising when you look at what eligible providers and hospitals deferred in Stage 1, was that patient engagement, care coordination, and quality measures were some of the main obstacles.
March 8, 2012 Mark Hagland
article
Most industry experts analyzing the proposed rule for Stage 2 of the meaningful use process under the HITECH Act, as well as many of the CIOs and other healthcare IT leaders looking at the rule, have expressed broadly positive comments about it, even as they have cautioned their colleagues about some of its challenges and complexities. One of those industry experts who has come away broadly positive after a detailed analysis of the rule is Mark Segal, Ph.D., vice president, government and industry affairs, for GE Healthcare IT. The Oak Park, Ill.-based Segal spoke recently with HCI Editor-in-Chief Mark Hagland regarding his analysis of the rule.
March 7, 2012 David Raths
article
Kicking off the 33rd meeting of the federal Health IT Policy Committee on March 7, Farzad Mostashari, M.D., national coordinator for health IT, was eager to address the study published in the March issue of Health Affairs that questioned whether investment in health information technology would lead to cost savings. Mostashari told the assembled audience that the only thing the study found was that clinicians with systems that let them view images ordered more images. “It is not a particularly surprising observation,” he said.
February 28, 2012 David Raths, Jennifer Prestigiacomo, and Mark Hagland
article
Hospital, physician group, and health system IT leaders have been busy the past few days analyzing the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM, or “proposed rule”) on Stage 2 of meaningful use, which was released by the federal Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) and announced publicly by Farzad Mostashari, M.D., the national coordinator for health IT, on Thursday, Feb. 23, during the waning hours of the HIMSS Conference last week. With 455 pages to scan, many are finding that just reading through the text of the proposed rule is taking numerous hours. Not surprisingly, some organizations are taking their time to perform a comprehensive analysis of the stage 2 proposed rule.
February 24, 2012 David Raths
blog
Even though organizations have known that patient portals were going to be required, this ups the ante quite a bit. I think providers are gong to be unhappy with the requirement that makes them responsible for making sure that 10 percent of patients view or download health information.
