Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)
Electronic health record systems vendor Allscripts, which is said to be shopping for a buyer, announced Monday that Richard J. Poulton will sign on as chief financial officer, effective Oct. 29.
After one year at the helm of the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), Susan Turney, MD, is presiding over nothing short of a reinvention for medical practices across the nation. She talked with Healthcare IT News about the promise and the difficulties practices face as they shape a new model.
The Citizens' Council for Health Freedom (CCHF) has added its voice to those of four Republican lawmakers who recently called for a temporary halt to meaningful use incentives until the program is revamped. But, unlike the lawmakers, CCHF wants federal involvement in EHRs eliminated altogether.
As director of the HIT Initiatives Group in the Office of E-health Standards and Services at CMS, Elizabeth Holland is front and center at the rules table, shaping the meaningful use rules that many view as driving healthcare transformation. Holland is a veteran policymaker. She joined CMS in 1991, right around the time the proposed rule for the Medicare fee schedule was in the works. CMS received 100,000 comments - all on paper.
Healthcare organizations have a lot on their plates nowadays, and the challenges are only growing. Meaningful use is a big one, of course - not least Stage 2's new focus on patient engagement.
HIMSS Analytics' Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) has been tracking hospitals' slow upward climb towards advanced health IT use - an eight step ladder, from paper-based to totally wired - since 2005.
Imagine a clinical database containing medical histories, diseases and demographic data taken from millions of patients across the U.S. Imagine data analytics that could help eliminate healthcare disparities and socioeconomic inequalities, could help pinpoint certain diseases in particular populations, reduce morbidity numbers, and rather than improve healthcare for a single patient, could potentially improve the healthcare of millions across a geographic area.
The American Medical Association recently called on CMS to exempt physicians who were close to retirement from the meaningful use program, arguing it would be too costly, perhaps even driving doctors to drop their Medicare patients to avoid the program's penalties come 2015.
As it rolls out a new electronic health record system across eight hospitals, MaineHealth will also deploy speech recognition technology to make it easier and quicker to fill in the patient chart.
The Seventh Annual National Health IT Week, held September 10-14, celebrated the need for health information technology in making comprehensive healthcare reform possible, and was a testament to the progress being made.