Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)
athenahealth is expanding its stronghold in the physician market with the announcement today that it would acquire San Mateo, Calif.-based Epocrates, a mobile health company known for its point-of-care medical apps for physicians. The acquisition will accelerate athenahealth's vision to build the nation's health information backbone, executives say.
The year 2012 was the year when data showed its muscle, whether in the presidential elections or in demonstrating how deeply entrenched the adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records had become.
Deborah Peel, MD, was trained as a Freudian psychoanalyst and worked as a psychiatrist in Austin, Texas, for nearly three decades before becoming a privacy activist, founding the group Patient Privacy Rights in 2006 after being appalled by HIPAA's evolution into what she sees as a weak baseline for privacy and security.
Once considered the leading edge of information technology, computerized physician order entry is now simmering on the back burner of healthcare priorities. While it is not forgotten, attention toward CPOE has been deflected in favor of other concerns, such as meaningful use, interoperability, RAC audits and ICD-10 coding projects. Yet it is a critical piece of meaningful use.
ACOs are an idea whose time has come, according to Gene Lindsey, MD, president and CEO of Newton, Mass.-based Atrius Health.
Sixty-nine percent of U.S. primary care physicians reported using electronic medical records in 2012 - up from 46 percent in 2009, according to findings from the 2012 Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey.
Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record (EHR) incentive payments are estimated to have reached $9.245 billion to 177,100 physicians and hospitals through November since the program's inception and are anticipated to reach $10 billion by the end of the year (Healthcare IT News went to press before the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) posted final figures in late December).
We love the prospect of a new year ahead - 365 new days. It's just a calendar, of course, a tool for ordering days, setting meetings, making appointments and remembering birthdays. But as we move from the last day of one year to the first day of the next, our Outlook and Google calendars seem so much more than a way to schedule yet more tasks, more appointments, more projects and more deadlines.
No one would have guessed how far and how fast the federal incentive program for the adoption of EHRs would grow. Funding was mandated in 2009 under the HITECH ACT, with an estimated total expenditure anticipated at $20 billion. That payout has already reached $9.2B in the program's second year of a five-year program.
As the National Football League playoffs kick-off this month, there will be no shortage of excitement on the gridiron. There will also be one big difference taking place behind the scenes: The NFL will make the switch from paper to electronic health records.