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Tamara St. Claire is the chief innovation officer of Xerox Healthcare – and later this month at HIMSS16 she will also be among the Social Media Ambassadors credentialed to cover the conference.

(SPONSORED) Learn how system interoperability is making the process of sharing patient data simpler than ever been before with substantial benefits.

By John Halamka’s standards, healthcare IT is pretty average. In fact, he’d only give the sector a B-minus.

Many providers are at a crossroads right now: Either join an accountable care organization or be placed into Medicare’s Merit-Based Incentive Payment System. Set to begin in 2017, MIPS uses value-based modifiers to rank providers by quality and is expected to fold together with meaningful use, essentially merging the current pay-for-performance models under one umbrella. MIPS is part of the Medicare Access & CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, or MACRA, which repeals CMS' Medicare Part B Sustainable Growth Rate reimbursement formula and replaces it with a pay-for-performance model. Providers can choose to join an ACO or be part of MIPS. "People are waiting with bated breath for MIPS rules, just like they were for meaningful use," said Tom Lee, CEO and founder of SA Ignite, which develops analytics tools to help providers keep track of complex government programs. "The biggest thing on the horizon is there are a lot of details on this that will come to light when the rules come out." [Also: Behavioral telehealth key for ACO success] "MIPS has higher bonuses, but higher risks," Lee said."Providers don't need to choose a physician group to be a part of the program, but those providers who don't remain on top of the heap lose money.” The rules are due to be finalized by November. Although Acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt has hinted draft rules may come out as soon as this spring. When choosing a program, providers must assess the risk and whether they want the guaranteed 5 percent from ACOs or choose MPIS where the value-based swing between the lowest and highest reimbursement could be up to 36 precent when accounting for bonuses, Lee said.   [Also: Mostashari's ACO startup is growing] "ACOs are unproven, and most have been penalized; weigh that against costs to get the ACO up-and-running," Lee said.  The trouble is that many providers are struggling with a lack of resources, which makes it difficult to "poll through the information to meet these requirements," said Darren Barnes, director of quality and performance improvement, Southern Illinois University HealthCare. "In today's world of quality improvement, you not only have to provide quality care, but prove you can deliver," said Barnes. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] Many ambulatory providers in particular are having difficulty transitioning into a quality management system, as "hospital measures are better defined than with multi-specialty ambulatory care organizations," Barnes said. "With data requirements and support, healthcare organizations are being asked to do more with less." Hospitals have a leg up on quality measure improvements, compared with physician practices. Where hospitals can assess workflows and certain measures on a daily basis, that's more challenging for small ambulatory facilities, posing a special challenge for participating in a physician reimbursement program. Moreover, data is hard to pull from the EHRs, said Barnes, and providers will continue to struggle "until we can build these systems to look at patient needs and improve the ability for patients to have access to the data for more personalized care." Twitter: @JessiefDavis

Chuck Kesler, chief information security officer at Duke Health, and Mac McMillan, CEO and cofounder of healthcare IT security consulting firm CynergisTek, share similar philosophies on healthcare data security.

Electronic health record giant Epic Systems has cracked Glassdoor's list of top 20 companies that provide their employees unique benefits and perks. Epic joined other well-known businesses in the field of healthcare IT as well as business titans such as Netflix, Facebook, Google and Disney. Glassdoor, one of the three largest U.S. job websites, picked companies with unique benefits by analyzing hundreds of thousands of reviews employees posted on its website since August 2014. Among some of the benefits: "Panda Fridays," improv classes, ski slope passes and a $30-a-month book allowance. [Also: Epic buys Mayo Clinic data center in $46 million sale-leaseback] The Glassdoor analysis puts Epic at No. 16 on the list of top 20 companies, with an overall benefit rating of 4.3 out of 5. It's credited for, among other perks, enabling its employees – once they've worked for the company five years – to take a paid four-week sabbatical to pursue their creative talents. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] Other firms in the healthcare space are on the list. Accenture, touted for its commitment to LGBT rights, covers gender reassignment for its employees. PwC offers its employees $1,200 per year for student loan debt reimbursement. Salesforce offers six days of paid volunteer time off each year, and $1,000 for employees to donate to the charities of their choice. Other tech companies in Glassdoor's Top 20 include Twitter, which offers on-site acupuncture and improv classes; Adobe, which shuts down the company for a week each in winter and summer, and Airbnb, which gives employees an annual stipend of $2,000 to travel and stay in an Airbnb listing anywhere worldwide. Twitter: @HealthITNews

VisualDx will debut a new version of its clinical decision support system at HIMSS16. The company is growing its image- and graphics-oriented software from supporting skin, eye and oral care decision-making to include more chief medical complaints.

The Baylor College of Medicine revenue cycle department has come back from dire situation that saw the division hemorrhaging staff over what CTO Alex Izaguirre called a lack of vision for department.

Advanced degrees and credentials literally pay off for health IT professionals. Additional credentials such as certifications, in fact, roughly double the chances professionals have of earning an annual salary greater than $130,000, according to a new survey from the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine, Bisk Education, and HIMSS. While 29 percent of survey respondents said they make more than $130,000 annually, only 12 percent without credentials rank in that category. Women lead in the realm of furthering education, with 232 reporting additional credentials compared with 150 male survey respondents, the survey said.  [Also: Healthcare IT workers shortage stings in Georgia] The majority of health IT professionals earn salaries greater than $80,000 per year, the study found, and 140 survey respondents said they were very satisfied with their career in health informatics compared with only 18 describing themselves as very dissatisfied,. The survey included 404 health IT professionals from 7 countries and 42 U.S. states. There is a correlation between the level of education and job satisfaction: Professionals with advanced degrees (master’s and doctorates) are more likely to be very satisfied (89 respondents) or at least somewhat satisfied (55) with their career choice, compared with people who are very dissatisfied (4), the survey determined. [Also: Big salary gap between men, women healthcare pros] Of the 404 survey respondents, 303 reported unique job titles. The potential exists to categorically break down job titles and discover how the different categories correlate with income and education, the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine said; however, there is a larger narrative here concerning the profession’s many niches, which require professionals with a wide range of skills and backgrounds. Health IT professionals overwhelmingly see career growth over the next five years: 337 survey respondents believe their career will continue to grow, compared with only 41 who do not. Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT

As if healthcare executives don't have enough worries about implementing electronic health records, yet another issue is starting to ramp up. "What's been happening more frequently in the last few years is that certain plaintiffs' lawyers – a kind of group of them who communicate with each other – have started to see the medical record as an opportunity for litigation," said Mary Re Knack, a Seattle-based attorney for the firm Ogden Murphy Wallace. Knack will be presenting an exploration of these emerging litigation troubles in the session "Just Press Print: Challenges in Producing EHRs in Litigation" with colleague Elana R. Zana at HIMSS16, beginning in late February. Twitter: @HealthITNews Electronic health record design is paramount among those issues, Knack said, because EHR vendors quite naturally did not build the software with litigation in mind. "The data is all stored behind these templates, and depending on what you are trying to look at, whether it's a summary or lab reports or such, the data then populates the template on a screen. But when you print it, it doesn't print out as cleanly or as nicely,” Knack said. One of these obvious challenges in trying to review somebody's care is how do you see it? How do you even read what the care was? Who did what? And when? "You may have a case that's very straightforward medical malpractice, but because of the way the medical records get printed out, the same piece of data may appear in five places. Somebody who looks at it, whose goal is to show how it's confusing, can then start to challenge the care that was given based on the fact the medical record is confusing,” Knack explained. “They can take another step, and that is questioning whether the data in the medical record is accurate or if it has been changed." As a result, Knack said, a healthcare provider can find itself in litigation that is ostensibly about the care provided, when in actuality that organization has to " defend how the medical record works." [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] Practically speaking, she said, the potentially expensive situation needs to be addressed by enhanced communication between provider organizations, particularly C-suite staff, and their vendors, and also internally within provider systems. "In the healthcare community, the medical negligence work, because of the way it's insured, tends to kind of be off on the side,” she added. “This isn't true in every healthcare setting, of course, but it's off to the side many times so the people who are the decision makers with respect to bigger issues aren't necessarily aware of how these particulars are being used in litigation, because litigation is handled 'over there.'" Knack and Zana will be presenting "Just Press Print: Challenges in Producing EHRs in Litigation" from 2:30 - 3:30 p.m. March 1 at the Sands Expo Convention Center, Palazzo L. Twitter: @HealthITNews