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Nurses, PAs, Physicians Share in Federal Grants to Enlarge Primary Care Workforce

September 29, 2010 — The new healthcare reform law that will extend insurance coverage to millions of Americans also is attempting to expand the nation’s primary care workforce with a major infusion of cash. Although physicians are the main beneficiaries, registered nurses and physician assistants (PAs) also stand to gain in significant ways. US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius yesterday announced $320 million in grants [...]

 

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Advanced features of e-prescribing often overlooked by physicians

Even when physicians have access to e-prescribing capabilities, many do not routinely use the technology, particularly the more advanced features the federal government is promoting with financial incentives, according to a new study by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC), a policy research organization funded principally by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and affiliated with Mathematica Policy Research Inc. According to the study, slightly more than 40 percent of responding [...]

 

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Federal Government Increases Flexibility in Rules for Electronic Health Record Adoption

After months of anticipation, the federal government finally released thenew rules for doctors and hospitals looking to cash in on stimulus funding incentives for the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs). Announced Tuesday, July 13, by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the final rules give health-care providers greater flexibility to meet “meaningful use” standards. That’s good news for the health-care industry, officials say, because the [...]

 

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EMR development debate focuses on standards, competition

Lest anyone think the issue has been settled, national health IT coordinator Dr. David Blumenthal says there is a “raging debate” in scientific and policy circles about whether standards or competition should drive EMR development, MassDevice reports. “There is a raging debate in the computer science world, which I have only lifted the lid on because I’m not a computer scientist, but it goes basically like this: Do we want a [...]

 

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Meaningful What?

Recently, I decided to do a little investigation. We all keep hearing about and thus talking about the new levels of mandated compliance. Not only hospitals have to adhere to the changes, but clinics and physicians offices as well. Of course, my impetus for this was self serving. Once again, I wanted to look at an aspect of our industry and profession that was going through changes. I wanted to [...]

 

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Coordinated Care System Helps Physicians Meet More Patient Needs

If you get sick at night or the weekend, all too often the local emergency room is the only medical facility with an open door. You may know that your regular doctor could treat your asthma or that nagging cough, but you wind up in the emergency room because your symptoms inconveniently occurred outside regular business hours. A study this month in Health Affairs found that Americans bypass their primary-care doctor [...]

 

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HHS funds patient-centered outcomes research

HHS awarded more than $14 million in grants to support programs that the agency said will promote more informed health decisions and options that are best suited to an individual patient’s needs and preferences. The funding is part of investments made through last year’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which appropriated $1.1 billion for patient-centered outcomes research. According to HHS, the National Institute for Minority Health and Health Disparities—which is [...]

 

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Rural hospitals take unique approach to health care for the poor

Bemidji, Minn. — Even rural hospitals that chose not to enroll in the scaled back GAMC program will lose millions of dollars this year providing charity care for the state’s poorest adults. That’s because those hospitals are no longer reimbursed. A growing number of hospitals are taking unusual steps to cut their losses and still provide care for the poorest of the poor. Tri-County Hospital in Wadena projected it would [...]

 

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EMR certification now in hands of 2 firms approved by HHS

The Dept. of Health and Human Services has tapped two software-testing companies to serve as the first authorized reviewers of electronic medical record systems that would make physicians and hospitals who adopted them eligible for federal financial incentives. The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology, based in Chicago, and the Drummond Group, based in Austin, Texas, now can test and certify products from EMR vendors to ensure that they meet [...]

 

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VA's Levin: ‘Blue button’ first step to lifetime EHR

The recently installed “blue button” on the Veteran Affairs Department’s MyHealtheVet portal represents a first step toward the type of full access to their personal health records veterans can expect to see when the VA stands up the virtual lifetime electronic record (VLER). That was how Peter Levin, the VA’s chief technology officer described the relationship between the blue button project and VLER, the ambitious VA-Defense Department plan to  track [...]

 

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New Meaningful Use Rules for Electronic Health Records: No Reason to Cheer

(Editor’s Note: The following is a response to a July 15, 2010 posting by Leslie Kane about the ease of demonstration of “EHR Meaningful Use — So Easy, Even a Caveman Could Do It?”. The Kane Scrutiny blog on Medscape.) As President of Geriatric Practice Management, Inc., I have more than 30 years’ experience running regional Medicare Part A and Part B providers. Complying with these rules will be a monumental systems-engineering [...]

 

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Survey: Most Hospitals Expect to Meet MU

Nearly all recently surveyed CIOs, mostly representing hospitals, expect their organizations to attempt to qualify for meaningful use incentive payments, according to the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, which queried its members and got 152 replies. Twenty-eight percent of all respondents expect to qualify for incentives during the first six months of fiscal year 2011, which start on October 1 with applications for incentives being accepted beginning in January. [...]

 

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Report explores barriers to EMR acceptance

Methods: A systematic literature review, based on research papers from 1998 to 2009, concerning barriers to the acceptance of EMRs by physicians was conducted. Four databases, “Science”, “EBSCO”, “PubMed”and “The Cochrane Library”, were used in the literature search. Studies were included in the analysis if they reported on physicians’perceived barriers toimplementing and using electronic medical records. Electronic medical records are defined as computerized medical information systems that collect, store and [...]

 

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Advanced features of e-prescribing often overlooked by physicians

Even when physicians have access to e-prescribing capabilities, many do not routinely use the technology, particularly the more advanced features the federal government is promoting with financial incentives, according to a new study by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC), a policy research organization funded principally by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and affiliated with Mathematica Policy Research Inc. According to the study, slightly more than 40 percent of responding [...]

 

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Healthcare units to receive IT incentives?

In a bid to develop the Nationwide Health Information Network and ensure that hospitals utilize IT systems to the best of their ability, a new bill will give incentive payments to centers that implement them. The bipartisan bill, put together by Rep. Pete Stark, Chair of the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, Rep. Zack Space (D-Ohio), Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee Chair Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.) and Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) [...]