Meaningful Use (MU)
See the following -
For Stage 2 MU, Don't Assume Vendors Have You Covered
A packed house at the Meaningful Use Symposium held March 3 at the 2013 HIMSS Annual Conference & Exhibition couldn't help but inspire awe and possibly conjure a little concern in the hearts of those attending. Read More »
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Fred Trotter Talks About Open Health Sustainability
Fred Trotter is easy to recognize; he's a tall man with an equally big presence. Whether he's sporting his signature wild shock of blond hair or has shaved it bald as he does once a year or so, he can't be missed in a crowd. Any place where open source, big data, and healthcare-oriented people are gathered, you are likely to find him and his crew. Fred Trotter headshotHe's a frequent speaker at OSCON and was recently a panelist at the SXSW MedTech Conference, which is where I caught up with him to ask about his passion for open source and health care related data...
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Free The Data: Patients As Consumers
Standard APIs are beginning to remove the barriers to effective Personal Health Record systems. Read More »
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Fueling Public HIE With Business Tools And Standards
Health information exchange technologies and business models among public health entities are in a state of flux. Yet the practice of HIE is going to be essential for public health departments to facilitate better care of individual and populations at a lower cost...
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Future of Info-Exchange Standards Debated
The federal Health IT Standards Committee received an abundance of comments along with a report from a work group reviewing a set of 12 specifications for information sharing to be used in the proposed nationwide health information network, or NwHIN. Dr. Read More »
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GAO Comes Down On Meaningful Use Program
The Government Accountability Office has recently raised an alarm that the meaningful use incentive program might not be all that it’s cracked up to be.
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GAO Hits EHR Incentive Program Hard
The GAO recently took a swipe at the government's Meaningful Use EHR Incentive Program, saying it lacked strategy and called for action to establish a strategy in order to achieve its goals, especially those aimed at improving care.
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Getting EHR Vendors Speaking the Same Language
So far, there is little financial incentive to support true interoperability, and if anything, many vendors see some level of proprietary distinction as desirable – creating barriers to customer defection.
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Go-live gone wrong
Much anticipated, and sometimes hyped, electronic health record system rollouts cost millions of dollars and often end up causing chaos, frustration, even firings at hospitals across the country. Case in point: Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine, a 600-bed hospital that is home to the celebrated Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital, and a part of the MaineHealth network. Read More »
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GOP Lawmakers Urge Halt On Meaningful-Use Payments
HHS should suspend incentive payments to providers in the electronic health-records program and delay penalties to those that do not integrate health IT until the federal department can define clear, interoperable standards, House Republican leaders suggested Thursday in a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Read More »
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GOP Senators: Health IT Policy Needs 'Reboot'
Six Republican Senators are asking the healthcare community for input on “recalibrating” health information technology policy, arguing that there are several problems with the current trajectory of the meaningful use program. Read More »
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Greenway Shows The Value Of Patient Data Beyond The EHR At HIMSS14
Company accelerates interoperability of data across platforms for care coordination, clinically driven financials and optimized population health; to demonstrate in booth 2503 Read More »
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Halamaka Takes a Deep Dive on the MACRA NPRM
As promised last week, I’ve read and taken detailed notes on the entire 962 page MACRA notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) so that you will not have to. Although this post is long, it is better than the 20 hours of reading I had to do! Here is everything you need to know from an IT perspective about the MACRA NPRM...What is the MACRA NPRM trying to achieve with regard to healthcare IT? The MACRA NPRM proposes to consolidate components of three existing programs, the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), the Physician Value-based Payment Modifier (VM), and the Medicare Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program for eligible professionals (EPs), creating a single set of reporting requirements. The rule would sunset payment adjustments under the current PQRS, VM, and the Medicare EHR Incentive Program for eligible professionals...
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Halamka Does FY16 Strategic Planning
As we gather together stakeholders for strategic planning of next year’s priorities, what are we hearing and what we have learned? 1. Clinicians are overwhelmed by the current demands of Meaningful Use, hundreds of quality measures, population health, care management, and patient/family engagement. All of these are good ideas individually but the sum of their requirements overwhelms providers. In an era when we’re trying to control costs, adding more clinical FTEs to spread the work over a large team is not possible. The end result is that providers spend hours each night catching up on the day’s documentation and are demanding better tools/automation to reduce their strain.
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Halamka on the November HIT Standards Committee
The November HIT Standards Committee included a comprehensive review of the CMS Meaningful Use Stage 3/Modification Rule and the ONC 2015 Certification Rule.
We begin the meeting with a presentation from Robert Anthony of the Meaningful Use Stage 3 and Modification Rule. A robust discussion followed. Issued raised as those similar to the ones I identified in previous blog posts. The main concern was the alignment of the CMS Meaningful Use rule with future pay for performance criteria that will be part of MACRA/Merit-based Payment Incentive programs.
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