Edmund Billings

See the following -

AMA Calls for Design Overhaul of Electronic Health Records to Improve Usability

Press Release | American Medical Association | September 16, 2014

Building on its landmark study with RAND Corp. confirming that discontent with electronic health records (EHRs) is taking a significant toll on physicians, the American Medical Association (AMA) today called for solutions to EHR systems that have neglected usability as a necessary feature. Responding to the urgent physician need for better designed EHR systems, the AMA today released a new frameworkPDF FIle outlining eight priorities for improving EHR usability to benefit caregivers and patients. Read More »

An Unfunded EHR Mandate for Behavioral Health: All Stick, No Carrot

Why politics, parity and performance requirements mean behavioral health hospitals should adopt now Read More »

AthenaHealth's Plan To Fix Health Care Hinges On Tiny Hospitals

Christina Farr | Fast Company | June 29, 2016

Edmund Billings spends about three weeks out of the month living out of a suitcase. He racked up 20,000 miles on the road in the past nine months, while driving to some of the most rural and remote parts of the country. Billings is a traveling salesman of sorts, but his business isn't vacuum cleaners or encyclopedias. It's health software. Billings is the associate chief medical officer for acute care at AthenaHealth, an IT company with a market cap of more than $5 billion that provides software and mobile apps for patient care and billing, including a cloud-based electronic health record...

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Bad EHR Design and Physician Dissatisfaction: It’s a Matter of Wasted Time.

As reported last year at HIMSS and by many online news and opinion sources since, physician dissatisfaction with EHRs is growing. Indeed, while this blog post doesn’t focus on the broader picture, general physician career dissatisfaction is disconcertingly high. The breakneck push for more and better EHR use as a component of regular medical care is a significant part of that malaise, but it is insufficient as an explanation. Read More »

Beyond HIT Interoperability: Open Platforms are the Key

Open platforms in health IT are inevitable. Exactly when OPEN becomes health IT’s de facto reality is impossible to determine. But we can be certain that it will happen because healthcare businesses focused on quality improvement and cost-effective care will demand it Read More »

Boost To VA EHR In The Works

Bernie Monegain | Healthcare IT News | July 4, 2014

The Department of Veterans Affairs has awarded a three-year, $162 million contract for upgrades to its VistA electronic health record. The announcement comes just as government officials assert in a news release Thursday that the multi-billion dollar acquisition to modernize the Department of Defense electronic health record is on track...

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Buy EHR vs Build EHR

John Lynn | Hospital EMR & EHR | October 14, 2013

I’ve long had an interest in the topic of when hospitals chose to buy their EHR software versus build their EHR software. In fact, we’ve written multiple times on the subject including Anne Zieger’s piece on “Some Hospitals Still Choosing To Build Own EMR“. Read More »

Can An Open Source Electronic Health Record Ever Be Ready For Prime-Time?

Zina Moukheiber | Forbes | August 29, 2012

In October, the Open Source Health Record Agent (OSEHRA) will hold its first summit, bringing together the government and open source developers, two radically different camps united in their goal to improve a lauded electronic health record in need of a face lift—the Veterans Affairs’ VistA. “We believe open source will help us innovate quickly,” says Mike O’Neill who sits on the board of OSEHRA, and is senior advisor to the Director, Veterans Affairs Innovation Initiative.

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Closed Records, EHR Decertification and the DoD

In anticipation of House of Cards Season 4, and with all due respect to the show’s creators, I think real life is giving us a perfect plotline that includes politicians, corporate interests, their lobbyists and a big fat government contract. Maybe Francis and Claire have me seeing conspiracies everywhere, but it seems a chain of recent health IT events have created intrigue in what is historically our staid, conservative industry. Follow the timeline with me and decide for yourself if I’m hearing black helicopters.

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Cloud-based EHR Interoperability Takes Front Stage

Because our industry is still in diapers, we focus on the lack of basic interoperability and ruminate on why EHR vendors struggle (aka, refuse) to share even basic patient data. But we must take heart, health IT friends, stiffen our upper lips and look to trends and examples that create optimism (i.e., help get us out of bed in the morning): 21st century interoperation is happening in health IT. In a recent interview with Healthcare Dive, Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush laid out a vision for how the cloud is the disruptive technology to bring healthcare into the Internet age. He describes “level three interoperation,” where two cloud-based systems connect once and support multiple interoperations that accomplish more than just data sharing.

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CPOE: Meaningful Use’s Primary Obstacle Is VistA’s Greatest Strength

 

A study recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) identifies the implementation and adoption of Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) functionality as the number one barrier for hospitals working toward Meaningful Use Stage 1. Entitled “Overcoming challenges to achieving meaningful use: Insights from hospitals that successfully received Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services payments in 2011,” the study findings are significant because the say a great deal about the way different health IT platforms have been developed.

Darwinian Health IT: Only well-designed EHRs will survive

Myopic efforts to meet certification and compliance requirements have added functionality and effort tangential to the care of the patient. Clinicians feel like they are working for the system instead of it working for them. The best EHRs are focused on helping physicians take care of patients, with Meaningful Use and ICD-10 derivative of patient care and documentation. Read More »

Do Epic And Interoperability Interface? Depends On Whom You Ask

Erin McCann | Healthcare IT News | December 12, 2014

The nation’s largest electronic medical record vendor has an image problem. Verona, Wis.-based Epic has come under fire this year over its lack of interoperability, spurring the company, once well known for its mum relationship with the press, to speak up...

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EHR Systems & Cost Transparency in the Healthcare Industry

Cost transparency is obviously a big issue in the healthcare industry. Whether it’s the amazing variation in costs hospitals charge patients for similar medical procedures, or the costs associated with acquiring and implementing an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system for a hospital - Why are all these costs often carefully hidden?  Is there something special about the healthcare industry that says – "Let's not talk about how much things really cost." Apparently, many industry leaders must feel that hospitals boards and patients have no need to know this information. Read More »

EHR Transition May Be Financially Risky For Hospitals

Marla Durben Hirsch | FierceEMR | April 30, 2013

Adoption of expensive electronic health record systems may hurt a hospital's bottom line, despite promises that the new systems will increase efficiencies and lower costs. Read More »