With so many things coming to a head to advance electronic health record adoption like never before, you could say it's the summer of health IT.
Last month saw a flurry of meetings in Washington associated with the fifth annual National Health IT Week, June 14-18, themed “One Voice, One Vision: Transforming Health and Care.” The week boasted the support of 178 organizations that thronged Washington to send the nation's leaders "a powerful message on the importance of fostering the widespread use of health IT to improve patient safety and healthcare quality."
Participants included vendors, provider organizations, payers, pharmaceutical/biotech companies, government agencies, trade associations, research foundations, and consumer protection groups.
The Health Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS) held its ninth annual HIT Policy Summit June 16-17 before swarming Capitol Hill to push its health IT agenda. Government Health IT hosted a conference and exhibition June 15-16 called "Innovation 2010: On the Threshold of Meaningful Use."
The eHealth Initiative, College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), National eHealth Collaborative, Women in Government, and the Institute for eHealth Policy also hosted Health IT Week events.
The 60 Regional Extension Centers, or RECs, began launching their services in May and June, with many of them represented at National Health IT Week. With $642 million in federal funding, these centers are expected to help some 100,000 providers adopt health IT and qualify for meaningful use incentives within the next two years.
As this column goes to print, the industry eagerly waits the final rule on meaningful use, which will guide vendors and providers toward measuring healthcare data to improve care, boosted by federal incentives over the next five years.
Even though many stakeholders are frustrated with the fast pace required to qualify, most are thrilled with the significant advances health IT is making and the overarching effect it is having, and will have, on U.S. healthcare.
Neal Neuberger, head of the Institute for e-Health Policy said in an interview with Healthcare IT News that despite how the Department of Health and Human Services was mandated by the legislation to make certain provisions in its rulemaking, "90 percent of it is spot on."
It's amazing how much of it is great," he said. He and many other industry leaders expect healthcare IT adoption measures will have many iterations over the coming years as the stipulations for incentives are tweaked closer to realistic goals.
Beginning in October – just a few short months away – providers who want to reap the first of the incentives available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act must start collecting health data electronically. It's easy to see why there is a hum in Washington – and across the country – as stakeholders and providers scramble to begin a U.S. healthcare revolution from paper to EHRs and from geographically-based variations in medical care to nationwide evidence-based practice.
