Patty Enrado
The great thing about the HIMSS10 roundtable that I attended this past Wednesday was that there were great discussions.
At HIMSS10 in Atlanta this week, you couldn't escape the topic of meaningful use and ARRA. From keynote addresses and education sessions to exhibit hall and Interoperability Showcase, the "M" word was the buzz word.
In his inaugural appearance at HIMSS10, David Blumenthal, MD, national coordinator for health information technology, reiterated his support for healthcare IT, calling information the "lifeblood of medicine."
At the HIMSS10 Interoperability Showcase, the Federal Health Architecture (FHA) exhibited 40 kiosks of 23 scenarios involving 60 organizations, increasing its presence times eight.
In the HIE Symposium's opening keynote at HIMSS10, Congressman Phil Gingrey, MD (R-Ga.), said using the stimulus bill to drive adoption of integrated EMRs is "absolutely the right thing to do."
Of the more than $100 million that California will receive from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for healthcare, the California Health and Human Services Agency will use $38.8 million to build a statewide health information exchange (HIE).
Texas Medical Association (TMA) released the results of its EMR 2009 Report. There is a lot of positive data to be mined from TMA's survey, but the most interesting is the data on those physicians who reported that they do not plan on implementing an EHR.
Competition and lost revenue are keeping communities from participating in health information exchanges, according to HIE officials around the country.
The meaningful use workgroup, which reports to HHS' Health IT Policy Committee, recommended a reduction in the number of measures providers would need to meet in order to qualify for federal incentive funds under CMS. From the overall feedback CMS has received since the meaningful use criteria was released at the end of December 2009, it's the right thing to do.
Four months after the switch to a new benefits administrator caused a massive claims backlog, the situation for Maryland mental health providers appears to be on the upswing. Even so, more repairs have to be made to the system before things can return to normal, state officials say.