Meaningful Use (MU)

The pharmaceutical giants look remarkably similar to the IBM of the late 80′s and early 90′s. For those of us who remember the IBM of that era, this is bad news. Read More »

Meaningful use, the government program of financial rewards and penalties for encouraging doctors to use electronic health records (EHRs), has several important deadlines approaching. Read More »

Over the past few months, stories have popped up chronicling doctors’, clinicians’ or other health care providers’ headaches moving to and/or accessing EHRs. The chorus of complaints has led the Senate Appropriations Committee to submit language in a draft bill that calls for a report from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) on what “the challenges and barriers” are to EHR interoperability.” Read More »

Connected health infrastructure is emerging as a binding agent for diverse devices and workflows, aiding diagnosis, monitoring and prevention in the healthcare industry. For such an infrastructure to be efficient, stakeholders must first ensure that interoperability and connectivity standards are in place. New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Healthcare and Medical Device Connectivity and Interoperability, finds that the adoption of connected healthcare infrastructure is not uniform across the world. This is primarily due to the lack of a holistic digital healthcare strategy that focuses on integrated care models.

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As hospitals, health systems and payers navigate the new risk-bearing landscape, synergies exist when clinical documentation improvement strategies are expanded to address both meaningful use (MU) SNOMED CT requirements and ICD-10. While the magnitude of the ICD-10 transition itself and the ongoing rumors of additional delays may tempt some organizations to pause in their pursuit of readiness, the bottom line is that advantages to clinical documentation can be realized even before the transition by using SNOMED CT within electronic health records...

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#EHRbacklash was born as EHRs, vendors, and the meaningful use incentive program are under perhaps as much fire as they’ve faced yet. On Tuesday, in fact, Black Book Rankings managing partner Doug Brown essentially struck at all three by saying that “meaningful use incentives created an artificial market for dozens of immature EHR products,” a scenario that may trigger “the year of the great EHR switch,” in 2013. Read More »

The proprietary business model makes the vendor the single source of HIT for hospital clients. Complexity and dependence are baked into both solutions and client relationships, creating a “vendor lock” scenario in which changing systems seems almost inconceivable.
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