Healthcare IT Update

Most Hospital CIOs Cite EMR as Top Priority

But a new survey also indicates their direct reports aren’t downloading the message. Getting electronic medical records systems off the ground in their hospitals is the most pressing concern for chief information officers, according to a recently reported survey, but that priority is not making its way down the totem pole to the managers and directors in their IT departments.

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Hospitals Find New HIT Issues in OIG’s 2010 Work Plan

Watch out. If your hospital breaches 1,000 records, you face a whopping $282,000 fine. Hospitals that read the HHS OIG’s 2010 Work Plan carefully will find an important clue about how to handle health information technology in the future. And it’s buried in a very real and present threat, so read on to find out how to not only avoid penalties from CMS in the present but also prepare for ARRA’s “meaningful use” requirement, which CMS announced on Dec. 30 will be tied to quality data. Reporting quality data and portable device compliance under HIPAA are two hot areas for hospitals in 2010, according to Jim Sheldon-Dean, director of compliance services at Lewis Creek Systems, who gave a recent audio presentation titled “OIG 2010 Work Plan for Hospitals.” And that makes sense, given CMS’s…

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Put All Your Hospital’s Data Security Policies in One Place

Make sure your security compliance program has these 4 policies. Once your hospital has created an information security management process, you are ready to create the rest of the policies and procedures that will help you comply with HIPAA security regulations. Jim Sheldon-Dean, director of compliance services with Lewis Creek Systems LLC, told participants in a recent audio conference that your hospital’s policies and procedures must reflect what your real operations are.

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Case Study: One Health System’s Plan for Physician EHR Adoption

The North Shore-LIJ Health System has jumped feet first into EHR and is spending millions to incentivize its physicians to adopt the program — and the clinical protocols that are built into it. North Shore-LIJ announced in September that it will pay for up to 85 percent of the cost of implementing and operating its new electronic health records (EHR) system in 7,000 affiliated physician offices in New York City and Long Island.

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Predict Your ARRA Dollars With This Handy Incentive Calculator

By now we’ve all heard that hospitals that meet ARRA’s criteria get to collect incentives starting at $2 million. The government will then adjust that figure based on your hospital’s Medicare discharges and the year that you make the EHR transition. Buy-and-install or Internet based? Jim Sheldon-Dean shows you how to make the right EHR decision for your health care organization. Just how much will your facility get? That can be a head scratcher. Calculate your anticipated share of funding with this breakdown of the Medicare incentive formula. Formula: For acute care prospective payment system (PPS) hospitals the formula is: Initial Amount times Medicare Share times Transition Factor = Total Incentive Amount The “Initial Amount” is $2 million plus $200 for each discharge between the 1,150th and 23,000thdischarge in a 12-month period. There is no credit for the first 1,149 discharges or discharges…

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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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