Today's Top Stories Editor's Corner: New privacy rules, old technology creating a lot of headaches Also Noted: Spotlight On... Make sure you're on our HiMSS party guest list!
Today's Top News1. Blumenthal says docs eventually 'will all support EHRs'
Returning to the 2004 roots of the national health IT coordinator's role as cheerleader-in-chief for EHRs, Dr. David Blumenthal took advantage of a public speech last week to say that EHRs will indeed be in widespread use nationwide in the not-too-distant future. "History has shown that things that improve healthcare become part of what is used. I propose to you that in a few years doctors will all support EHRs," Blumenthal said at the 18th National HIPAA Summit in Washington, according to Healthcare IT News. "Using EHRs will become a core competency for physicians. And once we've established that, it will be considered an absolute requisite." The national coordinator then said EHR adoption will take an escalator-like trajectory once federal financial incentives kick in next year. "I think we're going to see the upward slope of the adoption curve within a year or two, but it will be difficult to predict the slope," Blumenthal said. Another top HHS IT booster, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Director Dr. Carolyn Clancy, said that the pace of adoption will depend on how useful electronic health data is to physicians. "Information is the lifeblood of medicine," Clancy told the gathering. "Clinicians are trained to look at patients one at a time. But, what's missing is aggregated information." AHRQ, of course, is in charge of comparative-effectiveness research, and thus will be providing such aggregated information to help establish standards of care. For more on EHRs from the HIPAA Summit: Related Articles: Read more about: Physician Adoption, HIPAA Summit, electronic health records, David Blumenthal
2. Survey: Older, wealthier patients more likely to see docs with EMRs
The conventional wisdom is that younger doctors are more likely to use EMRs than their more senior counterparts--at least when the relative newcomers have a say in the buying decision. But does patient age matter when it comes to EMR adoption? A new survey seems to suggest just that. In a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media on behalf of EMR vendor Practice Fusion, nearly 53 percent of those over the age of 65 reported that their primary-care physicians kept records electronically of their last visit, compared to just 40 percent in the 24 to 34 age group. Overall, 48 percent of respondents said their primary-care physicians had EMRs, seemingly backing up estimates by the American Academy of Family Physicians, which has said for several years that perhaps half of all family practitioners were using EMRs. Affluence also seems to play a role in adoption. For patients with annual incomes above $50,000, physician EMR use was 53 percent. Only 45 percent of those who make less than $20,000 a year reported that their doctors had EMRs, according to the survey. Among those whose physicians had EMRs, about 45 percent report that the switch from paper happened in the last two years. The Practice Fusion report also suggests that the health IT industry has undergone rapid growth in the past year, adding 100,000 new jobs since the Feb. 17, 2009, signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. "I see the change in the exponential growth of our company. Doctors see it through the availability of innovative new technology. Educators see it through grants and the creation of new health IT courses. Patients see it in their doctor's office," Practice Fusion CEO Ryan Howard says in a company statement. For more information: Related Articles: Read more about: Workforce, Primary Care, Practice Fusion, Physician Adoption 3. Kibbe: New ONC standards make CCHIT process 'irrelevant'
The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology has had its fair share of critics. Some have been the kind of anonymous Internet ranters with either a personal axe to grind or perhaps a screw loose, but many have been both respectful and professional in airing their grievances. Solidly in the latter camp is Dr. David Kibbe, senior advisor to the American Academy of Family Physicians' Center for Health IT. Kibbe long has said the CCHIT certification process discourages innovation by being too complicated and costly for new, small companies that otherwise might shake up the EHR market with lower-priced, easier-to-use products. He also has held that the certification body was too closely tied to the health IT establishment. "CCHIT in effect acted as judge and jury for its own industry's definition of EHR software, inhibiting alternative approaches that would embrace component or modular architectures, web-based delivery also known as 'software-as-a-service,' and practical means of achieving interoperable data exchange between applications from different vendors," he says in a recent blog post. But Kibbe is heartened by a companion piece to the proposed rule for "meaningful use" of EHRs, namely the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology's interim final rule on standards and certification of health IT products. Kibbe says that the plan for HHS to certify the certifiers effectively renders CCHIT's process irrelevant and pushes the EHR market "in a direction away from the legacy monolithic, single-vendor, one-size-fits-all model." Says Kibbe, "Developers and software engineers crave this kind of freedom of creative expression, and entrepreneurs understand that new business models for health IT will be available only if developers have the data in easily accessible standardized format for their work." For more: Related Articles: Read more about: Vendors, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, Meaningful Use, electronic health records 4. EMR success rests on culture change, MD buy-in, executive leadership
We know, we know, you've heard this before: It takes executive leadership, a willingness to change the organizational culture and, of course, physician buy-in to make an EMR implementation both worthwhile and successful. At the Institute for Health Technology Transformation's Winter Health IT Summit in Chandler, Ariz., this week, Banner Health's senior director for clinical informatics, Judy Van Norman, explained how she had to spend about 80 percent of her time on cultural change--not the nuts and bolts of technology--to help the Phoenix-based organization implement its vision of EMR-enabled care transformation. "This project is not an IT project," Van Norman said. "The bigger part of the work is the people piece." That's pretty much what has gone on at Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown, Pa., too, which installed EMRs in more 25 ambulatory medical practices and will reach 40 more by the end of 2012. "In some cases, our EMR teams have spent as much as 80 percent of their time working with the practice on office workflow," Information Services Clinical Applications Director Lori Yackanicz writes in Hospitals & Health Networks. Cultural issues have been a big part of that. "With our initial implementations, we tailored the clinical templates to the demands of our different physician groups," Yackanicz writes. "But it soon became apparent that over-customization was imposing a greater workload on the EMR teams trying to support and maintain the systems. It also was having a negative effect on the overall system response time and making it very difficult to pull clinical data." So the IS department brought in physicians to help standardize clinical templates for each division and specialty, then enlisted physician champions to help sell other doctors on the idea of cultural change and the EMR as a vehicle for quality improvement. For more information about the Lehigh Valley strategy: Related Articles: Read more about: Physician Practices, Physician Adoption, Lehigh Valley Health Network, Institute for Health Technology Transformation 5. Lack of EMR data means continued consumer PHR apathy
We've been more critical than most when it comes to breathless hype surrounding personal health records, particularly the types of PHR that don't come directly from a provider organization. But the evidence that consumers aren't accepting certain kinds of PHRs just continues to pile up. The latest comes from the federal government. The Office of Personnel Management reports that 86 percent of health plans serving federal employees offered some form of PHR to their enrollee in 2009, up from 51 percent two years earlier. But only 19 percent of participating insurance companies had even 5 percent of members use their PHRs. Blame the fact that so few physicians and hospitals have EMRs from which to draw electronic clinical data, according to OPM, as well as "a lack of market acceptance of a common PHR definition, data content and portability standards." This news comes about a week after Revolution Health told its customers that it would discontinue its PHR by the end of February. The demise of the Revolution revolution prompted iHealthBeat editor George Lauer to question a whole segment of the market by calling on some industry watchers. "I think this shows the direct-to-consumer market for PHRs just doesn't work," John Moore, founder of health IT analysis firm Chilmark Research, told Lauer. "It's too much work for consumers--you can't expect them to collect, input and keep track of all that data," Moore said. Health 2.0 advocate--and one-time FierceHealthIT editor Matthew Holt, said simply, "PHRs don't exist...especially stand-alone data stores, which you enter your own data into and get nothing out of." Holt and Moore do see a future for PHRs, but only the types that automatically collect data from EMRs and other electronic sources, and then give patients something to act on in the interest of prevention or health maintenaince. They do mention Google Health and Microsoft's HealthVault as potential successes--but fortunately don't fall into the trap of thinking that those two products are somehow market leaders. To learn more: Related Articles: Read more about: Personal Health Records, Office of Personnel Management, Microsoft HealthVault, Google Health Also NotedSPOTLIGHT ON... Make sure you're on our HiMSS party guest list!
As you may have heard, FierceHealthIT is hosting a free networking party on Tuesday night, March 2, at the World of Coca-Cola. Click here to RSVP to our Mix It! cocktail party, co-sponsored by Tableau Software. The World of Coca-Cola is one of Atlanta's premier tourist destinations. Stop by and you'll have a chance to taste different versions of the top-secret Coke recipe from around the globe. Like many events that go on at HiMSS, our party isn't officially affiliated with or endorsed by HiMSS--but that won't stop it from being one of the most buzzed-about parties at this year's conference! So make sure you're on our guest list. You won't want to miss it! See you in Atlanta! Wendy Johnson, Healthcare group publisher P.S.: Additional sponsorship opportunities are still available. Email me directly for more details. > Quality Systems, parent company of NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, has a deal to acquire Opus Healthcare Solutions, an inpatient EMR vendor serving small, mostly rural hospitals. Press release > Upstart diagnostic lab firm Laboratory and BioDiagnostics (LabDx) is hoping direct connectivity between its testing equipment and physician EMRs will help it challenge the likes of Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp among independent practices and small hospitals. Article > Executives of rural hospitals doubt they will be able to achieve "meaningful use" of EMRs under the current CMS proposal. Blog > Leave it to Wall Street to deliver a buzz kill. Some top EMR vendors saw their stock prices drop by more than 10 percent in January. Article > The Obama administration wants $4 million next year to help the FDA develop a medical device registry that's tied to electronic health data. Article > Siemens Healthcare and NextGen Healthcare Information Systems have renewed their alliance to sell ambulatory EMRs to hospitals and health systems. Press release And Finally... Seriously, what kind of person steals an ambulance anyway? Article
Editor: Neil Versel - nversel@fiercemarkets.com Advertising Information: contact Ryan Willumson at ryan@fiercemarkets.com or call 202.824.5040 Explore our network of publications: New to FierceEMR? Sign up for free at www.FierceEMR.com FierceEMR © 2010 FierceMarkets - ® All rights reserved |
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