December 6, 2012 Mark Hagland
news
The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced modest changes to some of the technical requirements under Stage 2 of the meaningful use process under the HITECH Act. In an interim rule set to be published Dec. 7, CMS announced that it was replacing a small number of standards with new versions, and changing or exempting some meaningful use measures to allow providers to fulfill them in a more flexible way.
November 20, 2012 Jeff Smith, Assistant Director of Advocacy at CHIME
article
A House subcommittee on Science, Space and Technology held a hearing this week on Meaningful Use. The focus on Meaningful Use was to ask the question, "has the program truly been meaningful?" The response from all witness, which included ONC National Coordinator Dr. Farzad Mostashari and Intermountain VP & CIO Marc Probst, was a resounding "Yes."
November 20, 2012 David Raths
news
Despite the budgetary and work force challenges rural hospitals face, they are making steady progress on health information technology adoption. Between 2009 and 2011 the rural provider EHR adoption rate more than doubled, and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has set an ambitious goal of 1,000 rural hospitals becoming meaningful users of health IT by the end of 2014.
November 12, 2012 Michael Kamer
article
Saint Luke’s Health System, a 10-hospital network providing primary, acute, tertiary and chronic care throughout the Kansas City, Mo. area, implemented a single sign-on solution paired with thin clients that it says gives its physicians more face time with their patients.
November 6, 2012 Gabriel Perna
news
The Office for the Coordinator of Health IT (ONC) has released an updated version of its “quick reference grids," which aim to help providers understand what they have to do successfully attest to meaningful use by putting the objectives in one place. ONC released two separate 2014 Meaningful Use Quick Reference Grids; one for Stage 1 and one for Stage 2.
October 26, 2012 Gabriel Perna
news
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) posted the final Clinical Quality Measures (CQMS) for 2014 on its website, the government agency reported. CQMs will change in 2014 for providers, and those that are eligible for meaningful use, either Stage 1 or Stage 2, will have included the new criteria in their EHRs, CMS says.
October 24, 2012 Terri Gocsik
article
Electronic medical record (EMR) implementations are becoming more commonplace as hospitals and health systems race to meet governmental deadlines for achieving meaningful use. Yet implementation of an EMR in anesthesia services (referred to as an Anesthesia Information Management System or AIMS) remains low, and it’s not unusual that this practice area is one of the last departments to transition from paper to the electronic world.
October 16, 2012 Jeff Smith, Assistant Director of Advocacy at CHIME
article
CHIME members voiced their concern this week with congressional proposals to “immediately suspend” EHR incentive payments. In an Oct. 4 letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Ways & Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI-4), Energy & Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI-6), Ways & Means Health Subcommittee Chair Wally Herger (R-CA-2) and Energy & Commerce Health Subcommittee Chair Joe Pitts (R-PA-16) voice concern that the incentive payments were being wasted because many providers continue to lack interoperability.
October 16, 2012 Joe Bormel
blog
More than 214 people have been diagnosed with meningitis after receiving a tainted injection. The drug was contaminated with a fungus. Meanwhile, there's been another contamination event going on in the media related to healthcare IT. The writers of two articles conclude the benefits of HCIT are wildly overblown and represent a fanciful initiative that should be shut down. We look into this meningitis outbreak and its HCIT implications to help disprove their conclusions.
October 10, 2012 Pamela Dixon
article
As meaningful use challenges the industry on meeting deployment deadlines, it is becaoming clear that Chief Information Officers (CIOs) need help. As the Chief Medical Information Officers (CMIOs) has become more and more engaged, we see the interaction between these key IT players expanding and continuing to evolve. This is where the future of Healthcare IT is being built. The responses of two surveys conducted by executive search firm SSi-SEARCH, one with CIOs and the other with CMIOs, help to clarify each perspective as the interaction between these two key players moves forward.
September 28, 2012 Joe Bormel
blog
In Part 1 of this blog, we discussed the fact that the approaches we used to achieve Stage 1 of Meaningful Use may not be sufficient to move forward to achieve Stage 2. Here in the final installment, I’ll provide some detailed examples of why scalability will be a key to success in Stage 2. And in the end, the most important factors will be understanding and communicating your own local practice experience.
September 18, 2012 Joe Bormel
blog
Achieving MU Stage 2 is a complex undertaking that requires, among other things, the proper and efficient application of scalability. We need the ability to scale up what we did to achieve MU Stage 1. However, not all methods are scalable. So as we move forward to MU Stage 2, I’d like to make some recommendations for those of you who are resilient, but who really don’t like surprises.
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