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Another PHR venture (yawn) brings in some big names

I normally shy away from stories about the crowded and, to this point, spectacularly unsuccessful field of untethered personal health records, but one got my attention this week because of the names it’s just attracted.

Box, a cloud-storage company that offers something similar to Dropbox or Google Drive, has hired former White House CTO Aneesh Chopra and former Allscripts CEO Glen Tullman to, according to VentureBeat, “help the company push into the notoriously tricky health care vertical.” That’s an understatement. (Full disclosure: I serve on the advisory board of Health eVillages with Tullman, but I’m not in regular contact.)

Those hires bring instant credibility, though not necessarily success, and shows, as I’ve said before, that untethered PHRs might stand a chance once providers start addressing the patient-engagement requirements of Meaningful Use Stage 2. Emphasis on “might.” To date, nobody has found a way to get more than a small handful of patients to control their own medical data via PHRs.

Chopra — who once was managing director of the Advisory Board Co. and led open-data  efforts as secretary of technology in Virginia prior to joining the Obama administration — and Tullman know the health IT business better than most, but I still cast a skeptical eye on any PHR company until they prove to me they can capture a market. None ever has.

Good luck, gentlemen. You will need it.

 

March 19, 2014 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Happy birthday, HITECH, and pre-HIMSS humor

Today is the fifth anniversary of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act being signed into law, which also means today is the fifth anniversary of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which was rolled into the $831 billion stimulus bill. HITECH introduced “meaningful use” into the lexicon, and for that, it has had a lasting effect.

Through the end of 2013, the program had paid out more than $19 billion in Medicare and Medicaid incentives for EHR usage, and healthcare is still a mess. However, all of that money is for Stage 1, and the goal for the first stage was mostly to get technology in place. Stage 2, which is just getting started, is about interoperability and data capture, while Stage 3, which will not start before 2017, will be focused on actually improving outcomes. It is not until the third stage where we are supposed to see real gains in healthcare quality, though we should start seeing some efficiency improvements in Stage 2.

Penalties for not achieving Meaningful Use kick in next year, though that could change. According to Medscape, the new bill to repeal the much-reviled Medicare sustainable growth rate calls for bringing Meaningful Use, the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) and Medicare’s value-based payment modifier under a proposed new program called the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). This program would eliminate Meaningful Use penalties after 2017, but would base incentives and penalties on more factors than just EHR usage.

On a lighter note, MMRGlobal, the controversial PHR vendor that has been aggressive in defending its many patents but that also has, like every other vendor of untethered PHRs, had trouble landing many customers, has signed on actress and cancer survivor Fran Drescher as a spokesperson. There’s a video on the company’s Facebook page, with a teaser to “Watch For MMRGlobal on TV!” Draw your own conclusions.

On an even lighter note, digital media producer Gregg Masters has started the #HIMSSPickupLines hashtag on Twitter. A few samples:

 


 

Have fun.

February 17, 2014 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Podcast: MMRGlobal’s Bob Lorsch addresses the ‘patent troll’ issue

Two weeks ago, I picked apart a terribly misleading, ideologically steeped Fox News story that wrongly linked the initial failure of the healthcare.gov Affordable Care Act insurance exchange to the Meaningful Use EHR incentive program. Among my many criticisms was the reporter’s apparent confusion between an actual EHR and My Medical Records, the untethered PHR offered by MMRGlobal.

In that post, I said, “I haven’t seen a whole lot of evidence that MMRGlobal isn’t much more than a patent troll.”

Bob Lorsch, CEO of that company, posted in the comments that I should put my money where my mouth is and interview him. (I had interviewed Lorsch before, but never wrote a story because of my longstanding policy of not paying attention to untethered PHRs since none that I know of has gained any market traction, despite years of hype.)

As this podcast demonstrates, I took Lorsch up on his offer. It was at times contentious, in part because I challenged many of his statements in the Fox story and to me, and in part because he challenged some of mine.

He asked me a pointed question, whether I still thought he was a patent troll. Based on the fact that MMR actually earned patents on a product it actively markets and didn’t just purchase someone else’s patents for the point of suing others, it’s hard to conclude that he is a patent troll.

Investopedia defines patent troll as:

A derogatory term used to describe people or companies that misuse patents as a business strategy. A patent troll obtains the patents being sold at auctions by bankrupt companies attempting to liquidate their assets, or by doing just enough research to prove they had the idea first. They can then launch lawsuits against infringing companies, or simply hold the patent without planning to practise the idea in an attempt to keep other companies productivity at a standstill.

By that definition, MMR is not. I still don’t think an untethered PHR is a good business model, a belief supported by the fact that publicly traded MMR is a penny stock, currently trading at less than 3 cents per share. I have said that patient engagement, called for on a small scale by Meaningful Use Stage 2 rules, could change the landscape for PHRs—with a better chance in pediatrics than for adult populations—but it certainly will take a few years.

I stand by my original statement that the Fox News story did health IT a huge disservice by latching onto one problem and trying to tie it to an unrelated issue simply because it fits an ideological narrative. As for MMR, well, take a listen and then judge for yourself. It’s a long podcast, but I went through the trouble of breaking it down by discussion point so you can skip around as necessary.

Podcast details: Interview with Bob Lorsch, CEO of MMRGlobal, recorded Oct. 18, 2013. MP3, mono, 128 bps, 49.5 MB, running time 54:07

2:03        About My Medical Records
3:26        Why he believes his product is better than traditional EHRs
5:00        My skepticism of untethered PHRs
6:28        Lorsch’s interview with HIStalk from February
6:40        MMR’s user base
8:00        Why he thinks MMR could facilitate health information exchange
9:40        Health information exchanges vs. health insurance exchanges
10:15     Patient-centered HIE as an alternative to multiple patient portals
12:20     Physician trust of patient-supplied data, and other workflow issues
15:05     Emergency use case
15:50     How MMR is different from other PHRs
16:32     “Last mile” of connectivity
18:17     His assertion in Fox story that patients lose control of health information and privacy under ACA, despite HIPAA
24:15     MMR carries cyber liability insurance
25:00     Scope of MMR’s patents
26:45     “Likely” infringement of patents
27:45     Lawsuits and licensing
29:30     Patent troll?
31:10     Negotiations with WebMD and others
33:00     MMR’s reputation
35:00     “We build and sell what we have intellectual property rights to.”
36:25     Other vendors ignoring patients?
36:50     Standardization in health IT
38:38     MMR’s low stock price
39:20     Patient engagement boosting PHR use?
42:00     Interest from WellPoint
42:48     Payers building trust with PHRs
44:18     Other features of MMR’s PHR
46:45     Segmentation of sensitive parts of medical records
49:08     Putting me on the spot
50:35     His objective in asserting patent rights
51:15     MMR’s issue with Walgreens
52:25     Revenue sharing vs. licensing

October 31, 2013 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Top 10 things wrong with Fox News smear job on EHRs

Today, FoxNews.com published a hit job on health IT and EHRs in the guise of another hit job on Obamacare. I found out about it courtesy of this tweet:

First off, it’s clear that Mostashari feels unshackled from having to watch his words now that he’s no longer national health IT coordinator. Secondly, he’s right. This story contains so many errors and misleading statements that it’s almost funny. Let’s count down the top 10.

10. “Under a George W. Bush-era executive order, all Americans should have access to their medical records by the end of 2014, part of a concept referred to as e-health. President Obama then made electronic medical records (EMRs) central to the success of the Affordable Care Act”

When Bush issued the executive order in 2004 that created the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, he set as a goal interoperable EMRs for “most” Americans. The “all” part came after Barack Obama took office in 2009.

9. Though Obama did reiterate the 2014 goal and up the stakes by saying “all Americans,” nobody realistically thought it could happen. After all, the HITECH Act, which created Meaningful Use, didn’t pass until March 2009 and Meaningful Use didn’t even start until 2011. Before the HITECH Act, ONC barely had any funding anyway. For five years, Congress failed to pass much in the way of health IT legislation, even though a federal EHR incentive program had bipartisan support, symbolized by an unlikely alliance between Newt Gingrich and Hillary Clinton.

8. “Doctors, practitioners and hospitals, though, have been enriching themselves with the incentives to install electronic medical records systems that are either not inter-operable or highly limited in their crossover with other providers.”

Meaningful Use was never intended for enrichment, or even to cover the full cost of an EHR system.

7. While systems mostly are not interoperable yet, that wasn’t the intent of Stage 1 of Meaningful Use. Stage 1 was meant to get systems installed. Stage 2, which has barely started for the early adopters among hospitals and won’t start for 2 1/2 months for physicians, is about interoperability. That’s where the savings and efficiencies are supposed to come from.

6. We’re years away from knowing whether Meaningful Use program did its job, though I don’t fault members of Congress such as Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) for putting pressure on the administration to demand more for the big taxpayer outlay.

5. “‘The electronic medical records system has been funded to hospitals at more than $1 billion per month. Apparently little or none of that money went to the enrollment process which is where the bottle neck for signing up to ObamaCare’s insurance exchanges appears to be,’ Robert Lorsch, a Los Angeles-based IT entrepreneur and chief executive of online medical records provider MMRGlobal, told Fox News.”

The money wasn’t supposed to go to the insurance enrollment process. The Meaningful Use incentive program was from the HITECH Act, part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, came a year later. Again, someone is confusing insurance and care. They are not the same thing.

4. “Lorsch, at MMRGlobal, offered the U.S. government what it describes as a user-friendly personal health record system for one dollar per month per family – a fraction of what it has cost the taxpayer so far.”

MMRGlobal’s product is an untethered personal health record. No untethered PHR anywhere is “user-friendly,” which is why adoption has been anemic. Without data from organizational EHRs, PHRs are worthless. Besides, the direct-to-consumer approach in healthcare has failed over and over, since people are used to having someone else — usually an insurance company — pick up the tab.

3. For that matter, MMRGlobal is a bad example to use as an alternative to EHRs. (The Fox story is correct in saying that other vendors do have close ties to the Obama administration, though the former Cerner executive’s name is Nancy-Ann DeParle, not “Nance.”) I could be wrong, but I haven’t seen a whole lot of evidence that MMRGlobal isn’t much more than a patent troll.

2. “But this process could have been easier if a nine-year, government-backed effort to set up a system of electronic medical records had gotten off the ground. Instead of setting up their medical ID for the first time, would-be customers would have their records already on file.”

Actually, as I wrote in a story just published in Healthcare IT News, we could have had national patient identifiers 15 years ago, as called for by the 1996 HIPAA statute. But Congress voted in 1998 not to fund implementation of a national patient ID and President Bill Clinton signed that into law. Since then, interoperability and patient matching have been mighty struggles.

1. “‘Plus, unlike under ObamaCare, the patient would be in control of their health information and, most importantly, their privacy,’ Lorsch said.”

Where in Obamacare does the patient lose control of health information? Less than a month ago, I was in Washington listening to HHS Office for Civil Rights Director Leon Rodriguez say, ““There is a clear right [in the HIPAA privacy rule] not only of patient access, but patient control over everything in their records.” This may come as news to some people, but patients own and control the information. They might not know it, but the language is pretty clear.

Already, the Fox story has been reposted in a number of blogs shared all over the Internet, so it’s being accepted as fact in some quarters. If you want the truth, you sometimes have to do the work yourself.

October 15, 2013 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Patient engagement: Check me out in ‘US News’

I’ve just had my first story published in a major national magazine, or at least the online version of one, namely US News and World Report. It’s about patient engagement strategies for hospitals and medical practices in the context of EHRs, for the magazine’s “Hospital of Tomorrow” feature, and I’m getting good feedback so far. Needless to say, I’m pretty excited. Check it out here.

Also, I’ll be presenting on Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. EDT at the American Telemedicine Association’s Fall Forum in the non-American (but very North American) city of Toronto. It’s there because this year’s ATA president is Dr. Ed Brown, president of the Ontario Telemedicine Network, right there in the T.O.  Steve Dean of Falls Church, Va.-based Inova Health System’s Inova Telemedicine Program and I will be counting down a top 10 of mobile apps we deem to be prominent, successful or highly useful. (The description in the online program is wrong as of this writing.)

September 7, 2013 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

A new HIT comic, and perhaps a Google fail?

Healthcare Technology Online reports this week that there is a new comic strip online called Hacking N’ Healthcare. “Hacking N’ Healthcare is a comic strip that takes a humorous look at the challenges often associated with implementing health information technology,” the magazine says. Here’s what appears to be the first edition, taking a swing at user experience design, but also, perhaps inadvertently, mocking personal health records and gamification in healthcare. (The timing is interesting. In a MobiHealthNews column that should be published Friday, I take the most measured, hopeful look at PHRs that I have since about 2007.)

Hacking ‘N Healthcare (from Health Technology Online)

 

I can’t determine if Healthcare Technology Online or Pathfinder Software is the source of this comic, or if it’s going to be a regular feature in either place. I Googled “Hacking ‘N Healthcare” and found nothing relevant. And speaking of fails, there is no word in the English language spelled “sceptor.” It’s “scepter” in American English and “sceptre” in the Queen’s English. Did I mention I’m available for all your editing needs?

 

August 8, 2013 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Guest podcast: Suzanne Leveille from OpenNotes

I now present the latest health IT-related podcast from Sivad Business Solutions, an interview with Suzanne Leveille, research director of OpenNotes, a project to give patients online access to the entirety of their own medical records, including the visit notes from clinicians. Leveille describes a trial at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania and Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. She reported that not one of the 105 participating physicians asked for the access to be shut off after a year. In some cases, patients even discovered errors and prevented adverse events.


Here is the description from Sivad:

A pleasure to welcome Suzanne Leveille to the program today. Suzanne is a professor of nursing at The University of Massachusetts-Boston, and the research director for OpenNotes.

OpenNotes is an initiative that invites patients to review their visit notes written by their doctors, nurses, or other clinicians.

As a patient, you have the right to read the notes your doctor or clinician writes about you during or after your appointment. Having the chance to read and discuss them with your doctor or family member can help you take better control of your health and health care.

As a healthcare professional, you may build better relationships with your patients and take better care of them when you share your visit notes. Our evidence suggests that opening up visit notes to patients may make care more efficient, improve communication, and most importantly may help patients become more actively involved with their health and health care.

Some highlights from the conversation include: the dramatic improvement between patient and doctor communications; how they overcome potential push back and resistance from physicians; patients became more engaged in their personal health care; OpenNotes has been pleasantly surprised at the patient engagement; how advanced technologies and mobile technology are going to impact the future of this idea; and how they are planning to spread the word and get more patients and doctors improving communications and care with OpenNotes!

 

May 16, 2013 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

My first portal experience

Yes, after all these years of writing about EMRs, EHRs, PHRs, patient portals and the like, I have had my first real personal experience with a patient portal, courtesy of my internist.

He still has a small practice, with four other physicians, including one fresh out of residency. Those small practices are a dying breed, but this doctor is changing with the times, too. He recently offered a concierge option for a few hundred patients. I declined because I don’t need to reach him that urgently.

The portal has been in place for a couple of years, and I may have logged in once or twice before to set up an account, but didn’t really do anything other than look around. This time, prompted by an e-mail informing me of a new URL, I logged in and checked my medication list. I remembered that another doctor had changed the dosage of one of my medications a while back, so I fired off a secure message informing this practice of the change. (It was a new URL presumably because the EHR vendor formerly known as Sage Healthcare adopted the Vitera Healthcare Solutions name a year ago and was switching its customers to a common, white-labeled portal.)

I also looked at some of my test results from a year and a half ago just to confirm that everything was more or less OK then, though I did see one abnormality with my HDL cholesterol. I last went for a physical in March 2011, about a month after I ungracefully cut my face open on a bathtub in Orlando during HIMSS11, so I was probably due. This practice lets patients request appointments — not actually choose open slots — online, so I sent my request. Tonight, about 24 hours later, I got my confirmation, and I’ll be seeing the doc in a couple of weeks.

It’s not a perfect system, but it was convenient enough for a night owl like myself who might not remember to call during business hours to make an appointment or simply not want to wait on hold or press a bunch of buttons to navigate a telephone menu. I did not see the Blue Button option to download my record that the federal government is pushing private vendors to adopt, but I’m sure that will be there by the time the practice is ready for “meaningful use” Stage 2 in a year or two. I don’t have a PHR anyway, so I wouldn’t be able to do anything with the data other than print it.

I suppose I should set up an emergency PHR at some point, even though I doubt any hospital or specialist I might get referred to would take the time to download my data from a USB drive or log into someone else’s portal. Untethered PHRs simply don’t fit physician workflow. That might change in MU Stage 2 when providers will have to send electronic discharge statements and patient summaries during transitions of care, but I’m still not convinced a patient-controlled PHR will be the right vehicle for these data transfers.

 

October 31, 2012 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Sampling of opinions on meaningful use Stage 2

I’ve been an absentee blogger yet again the last few weeks. Here’s something to chew on while I get caught up, a sampling of all the statements I received regarding the Stage 2 final rules for meaningful use, in the order I received them. Most interesting are what the consumer groups had to say because CMS lowered the threshold for sharing records through a patient portal to a laughable 5 percent of patients, down from the proposed (and almost equally laughable) level of 10 percent. Patients need to speak up and demand access to their own records. Providers need to stop fighting the inevitable.

National Partnership for Women & Families

Leading Consumer Advocate Lauds Stage 2 Meaningful Use Final Rule for Promoting Better Communication Among Doctors, Fewer Medical Errors and Lower Health Costs

Statement of Christine Bechtel, Vice President, National Partnership for Women & Families

“The Stage 2 Final Rule released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) this afternoon is a huge step forward.  It brings us closer to the days when fewer overwhelmed patients and their family caregivers struggle to keep track of tests, diagnoses and medications; beg their doctors to talk to one another; suffer avoidable medical errors; and pay for duplicative and unnecessary care.  The rule issued today offers the promise of better, more efficient care, improved safety and fewer hospital readmissions.

We are pleased that the new rule gives patients the ability to go online and view, download and transmit their health information from the Electronic Health Record (EHR) to secure places of their choosing.  A recent public opinion survey commissioned by the National Partnership for Women & Families found that this kind of feature helps consumers see great value in physicians’ use of EHRs, and helps them have more trust in electronic systems.  The fact that this is now a core requirement, and will apply to the hospital setting as well as to physicians, is key to finally recognizing the critical role patients play as partners in their own care. This is a huge advance that will allow patients to be more actively engaged in their care.  It helps realize the potential of health IT in ways the nation needs.

It is good that the new rule also recognizes the essential role that providers and their staff play in encouraging patients to use this online access.  It does that by holding physicians and hospitals accountable for ensuring that 5 percent of their patient population logs in once during the year.

In addition, enabling patients to download and transmit their health information electronically will help foster more of the kind of information sharing that is desperately needed to facilitate care coordination, improve safety and reduce costs.  Patients play a key role in information sharing, and this rule gives patients the tools they need to do just that.

The rule’s requirements that a summary of care document be sent from one provider to the next for at least one of every two transitions of care or referrals is a good step.  CMS is also requiring 10 percent of those transmissions to be electronic.  And providers will have to show they are capable of sending these documents to providers who have different EHRs.

Improving care coordination and patient engagement through these criteria (information sharing requirements and online access for patients) are cornerstones of building the foundation of interoperability that will support health system reform.  So many new models of care like Accountable Care Organizations and medical homes will crumble without this bedrock foundation.  This is a good day for consumers who urgently need a more efficient, safer, better coordinated health care system.”

Click the links below for:

  1. Interviews with physician leaders who have implemented patient portals (or online access for patients)
  2. A snapshot of the national HIT opinion survey results
  3. A full executive summary of the national HIT opinion survey results

 

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American Health Information Management Association

Meaningful Use Stage 2 Final Rule:

AHIMA Provides Initial Comments on CMS Ruling

 

CHICAGO – Aug. 23, 2012 Today the final rule on the Electronic Health Record Incentive Program Stage 2 Meaningful Use (MU2) was announced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). This act focuses on incentive payments to eligible professionals, hospitals and critical access hospitals participating in this program that successfully demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health record (EHR) technology.

A full analysis of this complex ruling announced as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (ARRA-HITECH) will be forthcoming from the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA). AHIMA is the preeminent nonprofit association representing Health Information Management (HIM) professionals on the front lines for implementing the rule.

While AHIMA studies the complete text of the rule and its scope, the following points have been included:

  • Consistent with the proposed regulation, health information technology (HIT) measures will allow for patients to have the ability to view online, download, and transmit their health information within four business days of the information being available.
  • CMS continues to acknowledge and align Clinical Quality Measures with other reporting programs to reduce burden and duplication of efforts.
  • All HIT Menu Set measures have been transitioned to the Core Set of measures with the exception of electronic syndromic surveillance data and advance directives.

 “We are encouraged to see CMS’ continued push toward actively exchanging health information to improve coordination of care thus improving patient safety,” said AHIMA CEO Lynne Thomas Gordon, MBA, RHIA, CAE, FACHE.  “We are also pleased to learn of CMS’ continued commitment toward engaging patients and families in their healthcare through the ability to view online, download and transmit their health information.  We believe patients must be partners and work side-by-side with their providers to achieve the best possible healthcare outcomes.”

According to Thomas Gordon, the 2014 compliance date CMS provided will enable the industry – providers, hospitals and vendors – the appropriate time to plan and implement the necessary changes.

“As HIM professionals, we are a critical component to the reporting of clinical and HIT quality measures in achieving meaningful use,” said Allison Viola, MBA, RHIA, senior director of federal relations at AHIMA. “We are pleased to see that CMS has heard our calls for increased alignment of quality reporting programs and acknowledgement of making an effort to reduce the reporting burden and duplication of reporting.  We also stand ready to support patients and their ability to have online access to their health information to ensure its privacy, integrity, and timeliness for their continued care.”

Live webinars to discuss the rule’s provisions will be available free for AHIMA members and for $59 for non-members. Visit ahima.org for the schedule and registration information.

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Society for Participatory Medicine

Statement of Sarah Krug, president of the Society for Participatory Medicine:

“Although we’re disappointed this final rule does not give patients next-day access to their electronic medical record after they leave the hospital, we believe that on balance the Stage 2 Meaningful Use requirements go a long ways towards patient empowerment and feature a number of important patient-centered innovations. Patients must be full partners in access to their health information so they can be full partners in their care. For that reason, the Society for Participatory Medicine intends to keep a sharp eye on how the new Meaningful Use rules are actually implemented.”

 

Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society

HIMSS Statement on Release of Meaningful Use Stage 2 and Standards & Certification Criteria Final Rules

August 24, 2012 – (Washington, DC) – HIMSS appreciates the release of the Meaningful Use Stage 2 and Standards & Certification Criteria final rules by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Stage 2 regulations allow the healthcare community to continue the necessary steps to ensure health information technology will support the transformation of healthcare delivery in the United States.

In our initial review of the Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Electronic Health Record Incentive Program–Stage 2 Final Rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, HIMSS has identified several significant policy decisions, including:

  • Setting the Meaningful Use Stage 2 start date as 2014, which will maximize the number of eligible professionals (EPs), eligible hospitals (EHs), and critical access hospitals (CAHs) prepared to meet Stage 2 requirements
  • Allowing a 90-day reporting period in Year 1 of Stage 2, which is consistent with HIMSS’ recommendations on the proposed rule
  • Accepting 2013 as the attestation deadline for EPs, EHs, and CAHs to avoid a Medicare payment adjustment, and allowing for exceptions, including limited availability of information technology
  • Finalizing Clinical Quality Measure submission specifications for EPs, EHs, and CAHs

ONC’s efforts in the Standards, Implementation Specifications, and Certification Criteria for Electronic Health Record Technology, 2014 Edition  appear to streamline the administrative process of certifying EHR products.  We note that the Final Rule both adopts and concurs with a number of HIMSS recommendations. The HIMSS response to the proposed rule had requested several points of clarity and additional specification around certain criterion, and we commend the government’s thorough review and inclusion of additional information to clarify many topics.

We are assessing impacts of each Final Rule regarding Clinical Quality Measurement, reporting options, standards specifications, and alignment with other federal quality reporting and performance improvement programs.

We look forward to continuing to work with the federal government and our members to ensure that the EHR Incentive Program makes impactful improvements to the quality of healthcare delivery in the United States.

Stay tuned for in-depth analysis on HIMSS’ Meaningful Use OneSource; a webinar series in September; and a full slate of Meaningful Use education and exhibition activities at HIMSS13, including a new Meaningful Use Experience.

MGMA-ACMPE

Statement from Susan Turney, MD, MS, president and CEO of MGMA-ACMPE

“MGMA is pleased that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) responded to our concerns regarding several of the proposed Stage 2 meaningful use requirements. Extending the start for stage 2 until 2014 was a necessary step to permit medical groups sufficient time to implement new software. Permitting group reporting will reduce administrative burden, as will lowering the thresholds for achieving certain measures such as mandatory online access and electronic exchange of summary of care documents. MGMA supports the rule’s expanded list of exclusions and believes it will allow physicians to achieve meaningful use with fewer hurdles.”

 

Health IT Now Coalition

Health IT Now Coalition Expresses Concern over Meaningful Use Stage 2 Final Rule
Stresses clinical exchange measures are insufficient

WASHINGTON – The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) today issued its final rule detailing criteria for Stage 2 of the federal electronic health-record system incentive program. The following should be attributed to Joel White, executive director of the Health IT Now Coalition<http://www.healthitnow.org>:

“While we are encouraged that ONC and CMS have recognized that care coordination cannot be achieved exclusively through directed exchange, the rule still fails to adequately address the core issue of interoperability.  Providers, developers, and state health information exchanges have already adopted and implemented more mature and scalable standards that are functioning well in the market today.

“More could and should have been done to support the interoperability requirements necessary for advanced payment and delivery reforms to operate optimally.  The measures for clinical exchange laid out in the Stage 2 final rule will likely not be sufficient.”

Health IT Now is a coalition to promote the rapid deployment of heath information technology (health IT). Health IT will benefit patients and health care consumers while supporting health practitioners to make smart decisions about patient care and save money. For more information, visit www.healthitnow.org<http://www.healthitnow.org>.

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College of Healthcare Information Management Executives

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) today issued a statement in response to final rules on Stage 2 of the EHR Incentive Payments program, also known as Meaningful Use:

“CHIME applauds efforts made by officials at the Department of Health and Human Services in working diligently to prepare final rules on Stage 2 of the EHR Incentive Payments program,” said CHIME President and CEO Richard A. Correll.

“We commend the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT for seeing the wisdom and practicality of heeding many of CHIME’s recommendations, filed during the spring public comment period. By allowing providers to demonstrate Meaningful Use through a 90-day EHR reporting period for 2014, government rule-makers have ensured greater levels of program success. And by including additional measures to the menu set, providers have a better chance of receiving funds for meeting Stage 2.

“However, we also recognize that these points are conciliatory and that many details may need further clarification. The final rule still puts providers at risk of not demonstrating meaningful use based on measures that are outside their control, such as requiring 5 percent of patients to view, download or transmit their health information during a 3-month period. Some areas of clarification include some of the exclusionary language as well as nuances around health information exchange provisions, clinical quality measures and accessing images through a certified EHR.

“CHIME will continue to delve into this sizable and weighty effort, including the technical specifications and certification criteria,” Correll added.

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September 5, 2012 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Podcast: Carrie Handley on patient empowerment with an iPad

Did you happen to catch my story in MobiHealthNews on Thursday about Carrie Handley, the IT consultant-turned-cancer patient? She got frustrated with first a misdiagnosis and then the hassle of lugging around a binder full of paper records that she had to go to multiple sites to collect to assure continuity of care during her treatment and surgeries. So Handley digitized all her records.

Initially, she transported the information on a USB drive, but that got lost in a doctor’s lab coat. Then, her son brought over an iPad. The tablet provided the right balance of portability and shareability. In this interview, Handley, a resident of Waterloo, Ontario (you know, the home of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion), describes the process and shares her thoughts in general on mobility in healthcare.

We wouldn’t have connected if she hadn’t read my tribute to my dad last month. After reading Handley’s story in the e-mail she sent me, I knew we had to do this podcast to help spread the idea that communication can help foster the kind of patient-centric care that eluded my dad, that initially eluded her and that probably eludes millions of people every year.

This Sunday is Father’s Day. I miss my dad terribly. But I take comfort in knowing that I’m doing a small part to raise awareness of multiple system atrophy (MSA) — the rare neurodegenerative disease that killed him — and perhaps advancing the cause of patient safety ever so slightly.

Podcast details: Interview with health IT consultant and cancer survivor Carrie Handley about mobility in healthcare. MP3, mono, 128 kbps, 26.7 MB. Running time 29:13.

June 14, 2012 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.