Neil Versel
Stage 2 of meaningful use is supposed to be about interoperability of data, with electronic records flowing securely between sites as needed to help hospitals and doctors provide better care. But the number of attestations to Stage 2 has been anemic, and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence suggesting true interoperability is a long way off.
With the recent news that four more participants in CMS's Pioneer ACO program are dropping out, the future of this important piece of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is in doubt, now that just half of the original 32 sites remain.
Stage 2 of meaningful use requires at least 5 percent of a given provider's patients to be engaged in their own care either through an online portal or an electronic personal health record.
An overarching theme from a vendor's first analytics conference is similar to something that EHR vendors have been saying for years: workflow and organizational culture are at least as important as the technology itself when it comes to healing healthcare through IT.
Now in its eighth year, the annual Health 2.0 Fall Conference has evolved from a showcase for not-ready-for-prime-time apps that wouldn't exist a year later to a self-congratulatory Silicon Valley pep rally to a more mature event that seems to be addressing real-world healthcare problems.
Neil Versel's father Mark Versel passed away May 11, 2012, from an insidious disease called multiple system atrophy, or MSA. In tribute to his father's memory, Versel discusses MSA and the patient safety nightmare that darkened his father's final days.
Stage 2 of meaningful use requires at least 5 percent of a given provider's patients to be engaged in their own care either through an online portal or an electronic personal health record. The threshold seems low, but it is the first time that achieving meaningful use is dependent on patient behavior.
Getting to the new world of doctors treating patient populations effectively requires new technologies and a substantive culture shift.
As thousands of physician practice managers, hospital CIOs and technology vendors gathered to discuss meaningful use, interoperability and ICD-10 at the annual Allscripts Client Experience users' meeting, a featured speaker encouraged them to keep their eye on the real prize: population health management.
The message that Allscripts Healthcare Solutions CEO and President Paul Black wants to share is simple. "We are back. We are doing well," Black said Wednesday in opening the annual Allscripts Client Experience -- ACE -- users' conference at the McCormick Place convention center.