Meaningful Use
While healthcare entities are still trying to change the Stage 1 meaningful use criteria, the Health IT Policy Committee has begun fleshing out the Stage 2 criteria.
The 62 regional extension centers (RECs) provided feedback that enabled the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT to announce the rollout of five new initiatives aimed at driving greater EHR adoption. They're great ideas, but shouldn't they have been in place when the RECs were first announced? In other words, shouldn't ONC have anticipated these needs?
Booming business for healthcare IT leads PwC's list of top six healthcare trends for 2011. PwC's Health Research Institute also predicts payers and providers will undergo a strategy makeover as they react to new rules and payment models, continuing cost pressures and new customer demands.
Surveys aside, the stories about physicians implementing EHRs as reported in local media are incredibly instructive in understanding what's happening out in the field with EHR adoption. I read about a family practice physician in a two-physician office in Mount Pleasant, Tex. His insights are quite interesting, and I encourage you to read the article.
KLAS on Wednesday announced its annual "2010 Top 20 Best in KLAS Awards: Software & Professional Services," ranking the best-performing software and professional service vendors across a wide range of market segments.
CHRISTUS Health, a Catholic not-for-profit health system, has announced plans to roll out Medicity's full technology suite to drive health information exchange infrastructure development across Texas, Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Georgia, Utah and New Mexico.
A panel that advises the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has endorsed steps to help healthcare providers identify and address hospitals, clinics, labs and other organizations electronically through directories.
Many independent physicians are partnering with their local hospitals to be able to tap into the hospital's EHR system with minimal cost. What obligations the independent physician offices must fulfill depends upon the agreements made or partnerships formed. Many physician offices aren't ready to enter into such partnerships that perhaps may include exclusive physician referral rights.
The consulting firm ImplementHIT, which helps hospitals and physician practices drive adoption of electronic health records, has launched a customized online learning solution for Allscripts Enterprise EHR for the 140 physicians and clinical staff users at Tucson Orthopaedic Institute (TOI), one of the Southwest's largest orthopaedic medical practices.
Early results from an annual survey of provider practices show that more than half of the physicians who responded use at least partial EHRs in their offices, slightly higher than the 2009 figure of 48.3 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.