The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) included $17 billion in incentive payments for the adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records (EHR). The payments began in 2011 and will end in 2016. In 2015, providers who have not adopted an EHR system will face financial penalties. But health care providers should proceed with caution. While the switch to EHR should improve the quality of care and increase [...]
Federal regulators will host a “national provider call” on Monday, March 12, to provide an overview of the proposed Stage 2 “meaningful use” rule for the HITECH Act electronic health recordincentive program. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which drafted the proposed rule, will offer the free informational session 12:30 to 2 p.m. Eastern. Registration will be available until noon, or when available space has been filled. Comparison Available Meanwhile, The Advisory [...]
Going to electronic records is more than flipping a switch. Practices must determine what do with old charts — and how long to hang onto them. During the change to an electronic medical record system, the focus for many practices is on how data will be collected, stored and analyzed going forward. But in most cases, there are many years’ worth of historical data in paper files that physicians will [...]
With Medicare’s push toward shared savings and accountable care organizations, healthcare business models are getting more complex, said Shahid Shah, software IT analyst and author of the blog The Healthcare IT Guy. The industry needs software to implement these new models. “Due to the new intricacies of organizational connections between different providers, standardization of workflows on existing EHRs won’t really be possible,” Shah says. “Most EHRs are not up to the [...]
While Medicare and Medicaid EHR programs offer incentives for eligible providers who adopt EHRs, only the Medicare program imposes a penalty on providers who delay the adoption of EHRs. Register for the program(s) and begin the process soon to maximize incentive dollars. Physicians report having a great interest in obtaining federal funds for adopting electronic health record (EHR) technology, but two of the biggest barriers to their adopting EHRs are [...]
[keyword id='Healthcare'] A band of U.S. states and technology vendors came together to create technical specifications that enable EHRs to feed into HIEs. The specifications, agreed upon Tuesday, “leverage existing HL7 standards, technical frameworks from IHE International, and HIE implementations,” the group explained in a prepared statement. Two use cases concern “the detailed data and metadata specification for a compliant Continuity of Care Document,” the working group noted, explaining that the [...]
Summer of 2012 will be an interesting time in healthcare, as Stage 2 requirements of meaningful use will finally come to light. In the meantime, doubts remain regarding the successful adoption of Stage 2 – and whether it’s even possible. As of now, certain roadblocks exist, and as long as they’re present, Stage 2 success is up in the air. That’s why we asked Guillermo Moreno, vice president of Experis [...]
Medicine and healthcare have been one of the most researched and studied branches of Science for centuries. There are records of use of medicines as early as 500 B.C. Research and development over millions of years has led to the establishment of the current structured healthcare system. Documentation of patient records is an integral component of healthcare and mandatory in many countries which rely on insurance-based healthcare systems. Early forms [...]
If you haven’t spent much time analyzing the costs of EHRs, this part of the process may be an eye opener. Why should one consider the hidden costs of EHRs? EHR costs are much more than just the initial purchase, implementation and maintenance fees. If a budget misses the hidden costs, an implementation could fail, degrade over time and worst-case scenario – bankrupt an organization. To help sort out these [...]
Care for patients with diabetes improved appreciably when their physicians use electronic health records (EHRs) extensively, according to a recent study. Physicians who participated in the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative from 2006 to 2008 significantly increased their ability to generate and use registries for laboratory results and medication usage. The more actively physicians used their EHRs, the more they used registries, particularly for care of patients with diabetes. Researchers looked at [...]
The cost, physician practice size, and lack of technical resources still present barriers for small healthcare providers in adopting electronic health records and participating in the meaningful use incentive program. Solo practitioners and small practices find it difficult to locate a lender willing to offer them an unsecured loan, said Dr. Sasha Kramer, a solo practitioner dermatologist in Olympia, Wash. Others who try to finance their electronic health record (EHR) [...]
Ten U.S. health systems have been identified by Thomson Reuters as performing at the top when it comes to quality of care, efficiency and patient satisfaction – metrics that are boosted with the use of information technology. Thomson Reuters released its third annual study Wednesday identifying the 10 top: Advocate Health Care* ― Oak Brook, IL Cape Cod Healthcare ― Hyannis, MA CareGroup Healthcare System ― Boston, MA Kettering Health [...]
The Massachusetts Regional Extension Center has signed up more than 2,500 primary care providers to assist them in becoming meaningful users of health IT, making it the leader of the nation’s 62 centers in meeting its recruitment goal one year into the program. After enrolling physicians, the next milestone will be for the extension centers to help physicians go live with certified electronic health records (EHRs) with electronic prescribing and [...]
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 made a significant investment to encourage the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) by healthcare providers and the chiropractic industry. Under the new program, due to begin in 2011, physicians — including DCs — are eligible for incentive payments totaling more than $40,000 for meeting EHR standards developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Conversely, healthcare providers who have [...]
Electronic health records get a special nod in the new national quality strategy release this week by the Department of Health and Human Services. The strategy, which was called for under the Affordable Care Act, is an initiative designed to establish priorities at the local, state and national levels to improve the quality of healthcare in the U.S. Under the category “improving care coordination through health information technology,” the quality [...]
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