Meaningful Use
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.
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.
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.
Telehealth used to be something few people knew about, or understood. Today, it is fast taking its place as a major aspect of healthcare, according to experts at the National eHealth Collaborative's Technology Crossroads Conference in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 27.
There are many elements of business intelligence in play within the healthcare IT continuum, but without a specific focus, the initiative is stuck in neutral. In fact, that is where many healthcare providers find themselves with their BI programs, system specialists say - wondering how to proceed and in which direction to move.
Hospitals can have hundreds of IT systems. Vendors have built proprietary databases. Not everyone follows the same standards. Health systems fear sharing data with competitors. Policymakers have not focused on health information exchange or EHR usability.
Mergers and acquisitions can be hazardous to a company's health, industry experts often warn. In the realm of health IT, this caveat has proved no exception.
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).
The recommendations for Stage 3 of meaningful use are now out for comment. Coincidentally or not, there is a new degree of pessimism about when health IT interoperability will ever be achieved.