By Liv Osby Stimulus money to the tune of $5.6 million was awarded to Health Sciences South Carolina with a goal of getting 1,000 primary care doctors in the state to adopt the new electronic medical records system. The funds will be used to set up a regional program called the Center for Information Technology Implementation Assistance. HSSC worked with the state Department of Health and Human Services to develop [...]
Growing adoption of electronic health records is expected to complement and boost the use of telehealth initiatives across the country, InformationWeek reports. Health care organizations are planning to deploy telehealth programs to increase access: To certain specialists; For patients with conditions that prevent them from traveling; and During patient transport, since some conditions require treatment while patients are in transit. Greater use of EHRs will provide remote specialists with more [...]
BOSTON, April 29 (UPI) — Simplifying and standardizing administrative procedures for medical bills could save about $7 billion a year, U.S. researcher’s estimate. Bonnie B. Blanchfield of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and colleagues have created a hypothetical model for medical billing that involves a single set of payment rules for multiple payers, a single claim form and standard rules of submission. If doctors’ offices used the streamlined medical billing [...]
By Rich Silverman We talk a lot in this blog about the financial aspects of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), and with good reason – they can entail a substantial investment in time and money. But it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of the purpose of all that investment – to save lives. There has been a great deal of research conducted into how much it will cost to implement an [...]
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Industry best practices, corporate transparency, and legal compliance will be the major topics of discussion at the 21st Annual Conference of the Medical Transcription Industry Association (MTIA) April 28 through May 1 in Daytona Beach, Florida. MTIA and its partner organization, the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI), will announce the completion of their Manual of Ethical Best Practices for the Healthcare Documentation Sector at the [...]
One of the keys to achieving meaningful use and thus being able to qualify for federal incentive payments for the implementation of EMRs is the use of Computerized Physician Order Entry. What exactly is CPOE and how can it be implemented successfully? CPOE is a program that physicians use to place orders for medications, lab tests, radiology exams, admissions, referrals and other tasks. A CPOE replaces written orders, phone calls [...]
By Neil Versel Just as predicted at the end of 2008, e-prescribing volume nearly tripled in 2009, according to prescription transaction network Surescripts. And the growth has picked up this year. Surescripts reports that U.S. prescribers wrote 191 million electronic prescriptions in 2009, up from 68 million a year earlier. That accounts for about 12 percent of all 1.63 billion original prescriptions–not refills–of all scripts written last year. For the [...]
Between 75-85 percent of physicians with EHRs are already using functions that meet some of the proposed criteria for demonstrating meaningful use, according to analysis from Seth O. Hogan, survey director, and Stephanie M. Kissam, health services research associate, at RTI International in Chicago. The authors of the survey, published in the April edition of Health Affairs, said their analysis contributes new information about the rates at which primary care [...]
By Rich Silverman There are hundreds and hundreds of Electronic Health Record software packages in the marketplace that claim to be capable of allowing you to establish meaningful use, but how do you know if those claims are true? So far there has not been an impartial, independent way to determine the truthfulness of a vendor’s claims. Earlier this month, the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) rolled out [...]
By Neil Versel If nothing else, it should at least be easy to register to receive federal incentive payments for meaningful use of EMRs. CMS has awarded a $1.6 million contract to CGI Federal, a Fairfax, Va.-based unit of Montreal-based technology consulting firm CGI Group, to revise the existing Provider Enrollment Chain Ownership System (PECOS) so physicians and hospitals can attest to meeting the requirements for meaningful use that will [...]
Health care industry experts expect recent policy changes to spur more physicians to start prescribing medications electronically in the coming years, the Wall Street Journal reports. Trends in E-Prescribing A recent report from the electronic prescribing network Surescripts found that the number of prescriptions submitted electronically increased from 68 million in 2008 to 191 million in 2009. According to Surescripts, about 25% of all office-based physicians have the technology necessary [...]
By Gen Wright Health facilities are busy places and one error in the request-handling queue can be disastrous for the day’s business. This is when everything goes haywire and nothing quite works out. Clients are screaming about the mismanagement and the staff is trying desperately to fix things and find the missing report. Has this ever happened to you? It happens to database intensive businesses like medical centers time and [...]
By Rajeev Rajagopal The healthcare industry is booming like never before. The substantial growth rate has triggered a massive response from BPO companies that offer accurate, affordable medical transcription for group practices. Hospitals, clinics, and healthcare centers strive to find the best transcription service providers in order to get quality service. Physicians in group practices can’t often find time to manage the great inflow of patients and in addition to [...]
By Andrea Kraynak Is your EHR meaningful use-compliant? Healthcare providers may soon be able to find out for sure. HHS released a proposed rule Tuesday for establishing certification programs for health information technology. The proposed rule describes the creation of a certification program for EHRs, as mandated by the HITECH Act. EHR certification is designed to “give purchasers and users of EHR technology assurances that the technology and products have [...]
By Chip Means Relaxing the meaningful use standards, as some physician organizations and members of Congress are urging HHS to do, would be a boon to the EMR industry, according to market research firm Kalorama Information, which completed its market research report “EMR 2010 (Market Analysis, ARRA Incentives, Key Players, and Important Trends)” earlier this year. The report predicts a $13.8 billion market that if properly driven by incentives and [...]
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