Healthcare IT Update

Physician EHR Adoption Gains Traction, Two Indicators Show

Source: CDC Physician office EHR adoption jumped only slightly last year. Was the ‘meaningful use’ definition too slow coming? Two bits of information from the past couple weeks or so indicate that EHR adoption is full-steam ahead. First indicator: Allscripts is making some serious cash. EHR mega-vendor Allscripts recorded revenues of nearly $170 million for the quarter ending November 30, 2009, Healthcare HIT News reports. That’s a 30 percent increase from the same quarter in 2008 ($128.6 million). “We believe that 2010 will be the ‘Year of the EHR’ in which we expect to see significant acceleration in the adoption and utilization of healthcare information technology to improve quality and reduce cost,” said Glen Tullman, Allscripts CEO. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime market opportunity, driven by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” Second indicator: EHR adoption…

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Paper Medical Records to EMR: The Dirty Little Secrets

Physician practices that are implementing EMR dish on how ‘easy’ it actually is. With all the hype out there about converting from paper records to EMR, I’ve heard very little about how that process actually happens. That’s why I appreciated heating Kris Cuddy’s nuts-and-bolts EMR implementation session at the Billing & Collections Conference in Orlando this week. And I REALLY appreciated comments from physicians and office managers at her session about what it’s really been like for them to implement EMR at their practices. They have a perspective you sometimes don’t see in all the glowing predictions about how great EMR is going to be once we all adopt it. Three hours, said one workshop participant. That’s how long it took him to transfer his first medical record from paper to EMR. Subsequent conversions are going more quickly, but the office manager says…

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Piecemeal Approach Might Avoid Stark Problems with EMR Incentives

If you’re a physician practice and you’re ready to line up for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 money to help you adopt a system for electronic medical records (EMR), don’t forget Stark and the fraud and abuse laws when you set up your agreements with hospitals and vendors. In a recent webinar, “EMR: Meeting Stark, F&A and ARRA Mandates,” Wayne Miller, a lawyer with the Compliance Law Group in Los Angeles, said that financing continues to be a roadblock to implementation of EMR systems. At this point, only 10% of hospitals and 20% of physicians offices have adopted them, according to Miller. “Even with stimulus money, adoption of EMR is very low,” he pointed out. “It is not exploding as people expected.” Because of the economy, there are fewer opportunities for providers to get the money they need…

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CMS Begins to Distribute Millions Earmarked for EHRs

Get your electronic health record in place so you can benefit from government bonuses. Late this summer, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that the government would appropriate over a billion dollars in grants to help healthcare providers implement electronic health records (EHRs), and it didn’t take long for the first awards to be distributed. On Sept. 29, HHS announced that it had awarded $27.8 million to health center-controlled networks and large health centers to implement EHRs and other health information technology initiatives. The goal of the funding is to improve productivity, accuracy, and quality via the use of EHRs. “These funds to expand and upgrade electronic health records systems will make a huge difference for health centers struggling to provide health care to the growing number of people in need,” said Mary Wakefield, PhD, RN, administrator of HHS’s Health Resources and Service Administration, in a Sept. 29 statement.

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HIPAA Staff Training Toolkit: EMR Snooping Can Land You in Court

Anne Pressly. Photo Source: Wikipedia If you’re looking for some ‘don’t try this at home’ stories for your next privacy compliance staff training session, keep this little ‘lesson learned’ in your files. Snooping around a public figure’s medical records has been around since paper files. But these days, EMR systems make it much easier for health system administrators — and law enforcement officials — to nab folks who indulge in illicit snooping. Earlier this summer, prosecutors charged three health care workers at St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center in Little Rock, Arkansas with improperly accessing the Anne Pressly’s medical records, the Associated Press reports. Anne Pressly was raped and murdered in October 2008 during a home invasion. The Little Rock news anchor’s death made national headlines, in part because she was a beautiful local celebrity who’d landed a bit…

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Seeking the Meaning of ‘Meaningful Use?’

We’ve all heard the term ‘meaningul use,’ but what exactly does it mean? The latest American Medical News tackles the ‘meaningful use’ question. To qualify for ARRA incentives, it’s not enough to simply purchase EHR. They must achieve ‘meaningful use.’ Here are some bullet-quick takeaways for HIT professionals seeking a path to enlightenment: HHS hasn’t officially defined ‘meaningful use’ in a regulation, but there’s enough language in the legislation to guess what the feds will say before their end-of-year deadline. Meaningful use involves system certification, as well as capabilities for electronic prescribing, quality reporting and information exchange. If you’re buying HIT now, the no-surprises approach is to go with a big vendor that will adapt your system to developing federal regs. Best way to get a jump on achieving meaningful use in your health care organization? Seek out those paper holdouts among your clinicians, and ‘electrify’ them. More from AMNews…

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