Patty Enrado
Consumers engage more in their own healthcare when they have access to information through personal health records, according to a new survey on consumers and health IT.
While the College of Healthcare Information Executives (CHIME) approves of the general concept of ONC's two-stage approach for EHR certification - a temporary and a permanent certification - the healthcare CIO organization has problems with the details of the approach.
Many providers have noted in various surveys and many speakers at conferences have said the federal incentives will not drive EHR adoption because there is no business case to implement EHRs.
Doylestown Hospital near Philadelphia has launched the next phase of its health IT connectivity initiative to share information with community physicians.
While the healthcare reform law does not focus on wellness, expect this area to grow, said E. David Hetz, cofounder and managing director of Cutlass Capital. Hetz spoke on a panel last week at the Health Technology Investment Forum.
The recently signed healthcare reform legislation is "extremely complex, extremely expensive and negative for insurers" and the effects on small business are "not clear," according to Thomas Hodapp, CEO of Access Capital Management.
The federal incentives target electronic medical and health records, but other healthcare technologies have the potential to transform the industry, a panel of investors said last week at the Health Technology Investment Forum.
A recent survey conducted by health IT vendor athenahealth and Sermo, an online physician community, painted a pretty grim picture of how physicians are feeling about the future of medicine. Against that background, the numbers surrounding EHRs are somewhat better. Eighty-one percent of physicians held a very favorable or somewhat favorable opinion of EHRs.
In a March 23 opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Deborah Peel, MD, argues that unless we put patients in control of their electronic healthcare records and put safeguards in place to make that data secure and private, the push to have a nationwide EHR system will fail. Peel is absolutely correct.
The American Hospital Association (AHA) submitted to ONC its recommendations for changes to the Interim Final Rule on Monday, March 15. All the comments are in. Since the IFRs were released, we've been mucking around in the details (along with the devil, so to speak). As we wait for ONC to sift through the recommendations and figure out which to incorporate, we as an industry need to ask ourselves: What's the end goal?