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 [...]
In the “real” world, people expect to pay more for something if it’s of higher quality or offers superior performance. That free-market standard promotes higher-quality products and services. The healthcare industry, however, generally does not operate in this manner. Patients have few options for “kicking the tires,” so to speak, before electing to start a drug treatment, undergo surgery or therapy, or choose a physician. This inability to get a [...]
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 [...]
Physicians understand the potential of health information technology to help improve patient care, and doctors are willing to work with the federal government through incentive programs designed to encourage more practices to go paperless. But the government went too far when designing the punitive side of some of these incentives, tying penalties to burdensome, unfair and even unrealistic mandates on many of the practices that are trying to work toward [...]
Confusion over vendor qualifications and federal guidelines slowed somewhat the projected growth rate of electronic medical records systems to 13.6% in 2010, a value of $15.7 billion, according to a study by the healthcare market research firm Kalorama Information. But despite the slower pace, considerable growth did occur in 2010. Kalorama Information publisher Bruce Carlson said more growth is expected in 2011 and beyond. “We think that while progress was [...]
The administration said these steps are essential, but it also signaled a willingness to consider changes to rules doctors consider burdensome.
Seventy-eight percent of Americans favor the use of electronic medical records, according to a recent study by NORC at the University of Chicago, an independent research organization. The study was published in the February edition of the journal HSR: Health Services Research. Researchers say this report is different because most previous studies of EMRs have focused on the attitudes of clinicians or health organizations. Surprisingly few have focused on the [...]
Electronic medical records appear to have varying effects on different types of primary care physicians based on whether they do more information review or information entry, according to a UC Davis study. The study, one of the first to measure the impact of electronic medical record-keeping on doctors’ productivity, examined the use of a multi-million dollar information technology system, which digitized patient records and allowed for electronic prescriptions and messaging. [...]
A bill to accelerate states’ ability to opt-out of parts of the national health reform law could give states more flexibility to continue working on their own brands of health system reform. Beginning in 2017, the little-discussed opt-out provision in the health reform law — written by Sen. Ron Wyden (D, Ore.) — allows states to request federal waivers to be exempted from certain requirements in the law. For example, [...]
JOEL HOOD, Chicago Tribune CHICAGO — Richard Ready had been a drinker most of his life, but by the time he became chief resident of neurosurgery at a prominent Chicago-area hospital, it was drugs, not alcohol, that kept him going. Ready took stimulants to keep alert through his daily rounds. He took heavy pain relievers to numb his emotions after his mother’s death. He wrote himself a prescription for the [...]
In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the American Hospital Association said it has found that hospitals have significantly less flexibility when it comes to demonstrating “meaningful use” of electronic medical records. “The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology requires hospitals to have in place EHRs that have been certified against all 24 objectives of meaningful use, not just the 19 that the [...]
For most of my career as a family doctor, I kept track of my patients’ health histories by scribbling hand-written notes in a paper chart. For a healthy child, I’d include dates when vaccines were given; for an adult with, say, diabetes, I’d make sure to jot down a recommended schedule of blood and urine tests as well as foot and eye exams. A majority of primary care physicians, in fact, still [...]
By Neil Versel The first anniversary of the enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act–Irvine, Calif.-based research firm SK&A published a report saying that 36.1 percent of physician offices have some form of electronic medical record. That’s 3.2 percentage points greater than the 32.9 percent adoption rate reported in February 2009. Those numbers may seem high, based on studies in esteemed academic publications such as the New England Journal [...]
The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology is about to lose its monopoly on EMR certification, as a final HHS rule establishing a temporary certification program requires testing organizations to earn government approval as authorized testing bodies. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology on Friday released a rule establishing a temporary certification program so the “meaningful use” stimulus effort can go forward as planned in 2011. [...]
By Pamela Lewis Dolan, The technology you adopt for your practice, including electronic medical record systems and smartphones, could become subject to Food and Drug Administration scrutiny. Experts are trying to discern what that level of examination might look like, and what specific technology would be affected. So far, there’s no clear answer. The FDA might get involved, experts say, because some kinds of health information technology could be considered [...]
Use advanced navigation for a better experience.
You can quickly scroll through posts by pressing the above keyboard keys. Now press Esc to close this window.
