Link: Thoughts on the Year Ahead
John Halamka presents his ideas about the major issues for 2012..
ICD10 - John predicts 25% of IT capacity will be consumed by ICD10 this year. Not good...
Meaningful Use Stage 2 including inpatient clinical documentation - now this is exciting. Potential criteria will likely include improvements to clinical records that improve care coordination and communication between providers. John suggested use of templates and social-networking like group documentation.
ACO Planning - The reform changes for ACOs will include focus on prevention and wellness. New business intelligence (BI) and clinical decision support (CDS) capabilities will be helpful in meeting these goals.
Compliance - Compliance issues will include "conflict of interest tracking, learning management systems for compliance education, and enhanced revenue cycle systems that provide decision support."
Security - yes, the past year had a long list of data breaches, malware, and mobile devices so security of PHI must be improved, particularly if we intend to move clinical decision support to the bedside or engage in Health Information Exchanges.
Link: A New Year's Forecast For The Health Care Bill
NPR topics presents a summary of the impact to the Affordable Care Act in a discussion between Audie Cornish and Noam Levey of the Los Angeles Times.
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Link: Usability and Successful EHR Meaningful Use
Recently the ONC posted on the Health IT Buzz Blog about the "challenges providers face in achieving Meaningful Use of electronic health records (EHRs)."
The concept of "useability" has long been known in other industries where new technology or applications enter the workplace. Some time ago I wrote about usability of health IT, however I expanded the definition to include a few more "E-bilities" as shown in the following graphic contained in the post: Part 4 of The Value of the Internet for Improving Healthcare.
This is the last post in the series and it focuses on capabilities, or "e-bilities" of technology to improve healthcare. Regardless of the mode of use (e.g. email or internet), technology must be easy to use, secure, reliable, and accessible.
For the past year, the SHARPC-Project 1 has focused on making use of technology easier for clinicians. One ONC staff member, Jacob Reider, MD had some interesting comments that focused on "The User Experience." His comments spanned the continuum of User Experience with a framework for how tools and/or applications can/should evolve.
Functional (it does what it is claimed to do)
Reliable (it works consistently)
Usable (it works in a way that is consistent with the user’s expectations)
Meaningful (it does something important or valuable)
Pleasurable (it is enjoyable to use)
So, I will end with one thought. Even if the system meets "Useability" standards for clinicians, achieving quality health data analytics still requires that accurate, timely and quality data is entered into the EHR avoiding the Garbage In-Garbage Out phenomenon.
Link: 8 Key issues for population health management in 2012
This article in Healthcare IT News caught my eye. A white paper written by the Care Continuum Alliance described significant market movement toward accountability and value driven healthcare outcomes as a result of collaborative models, such as ACOs. However, there are 8 key issues that could affect population health management in 2012:
Each of these items contains a plethora of complex issues that will require agreement, alignment, and cooperation between distinct parties. In order to simplify my thoughts on this topic, I offer the following.
Accountable care and collaborative models certainly provide the opportunity with electronic records to capture and disseminate research and/or de-identified clinical data for surveillance. The link to "accountability" also provides the impetus to develop predictive analytics, a personal favorite.
It is well known that mobile technology, including smart phones, are changing the nature of "computer use" and internet access. According to the article the author stated that "a patient-centered, consumer-empowered, pull-rather-than-push model will dominate, with social media in a position of importance."
Reducing re-admissions? Well, we should already be doing this, unfortunately the quality of healthcare in certain situations, or the variable factors in a patient's condition and care makes this a tough goal to reach all the time. However, Medicare tracking is looking a 3 conditions - heart failure, acute myocardial infarction and pneumonia.
Finally, the other items tout the value of competitive forces in healthcare resulting from support of "insourced programs," development of health insurance exchanges in 2014, and the single idea that is near and dear to a nurse - support for prevention and wellness!
Prevention and wellness has not been a priority for most clinicians due to its non-reimbursable status. Let's hope that changes. Since the Prevention and Public Health Fund is under discussion, Medicare added annual wellness visits and expanded coverage of obesity and cardiovascular disease prevention services.
2012 brings a year of great change and challenge. Best wishes to all for a safe, happy, and prosperous new year!
As clinicians, do we ever wonder how excellent patient care can be achieved? Do we become too involved in our deadlines, our tasks, or our own needs and lack the time to reflect and to improve? It is certainly an issue in today's healthcare environment as the delivery of care changes in the path to Meaningful Use...
Well, I watched this video today, posted by Brian Ahier. It is an epic portrait of how one individual came up with an idea that would provide quality care/experience to customers.
Click this link to watch the video - a moving and heart-felt story.
The Simple Truths of Service: Inspired by Johnny the Bagger
May you have a Happy and Safe Holiday Season!
The HIPAA Survival Guide's Privacy Rule Under HITECH Webinar will help get you up to speed on how the HITECH Act has impacted the HIPAA Privacy Rule and how marketplace trends are impacting it as well. The webinar will walk you through the Privacy Rule and discuss the effect that the HITECH Act has had under three major sections: 1) uses and disclosures of PHI contained in sections §164.502 through §164.514; 2) the Patient's Bill of Rights contained in sections §164.520 through §164.528; and 3) the Administrative Requirements contained in Section §164.530.
Date: December 13, 2011.
Time: 2:00 to 3:30 EST.
To register CLICK HERE.
Looking for best of breed HIPAA Training?
To stay current on the HITECH Act and its quickly changing regulatory scheme visit the HITECH Survival Guide website and/or sign up for our free monthly compliance newsletter. Also, check out our FREE EHR Checklist.
If you need tools that will help with your compliance initiatives then check out the HSG Store. Are you for an Internet Lawyer with HITECH /HIPAA experience?
I remember vividly reading about DNA and its mechanisms in James Watson's Double Helix. The unzipping of the two reversed strands interlocked by the strict pairing of nucleotides--adenine to thymine and guanine to cytosine. The complex and choreographed interactions with other molecules leading to the construction of proteins. The systematic beauty at the nucleus of life. It was all engaging enough for me to decide to study Biochemistry at university.
When I finished my degree I worked in international marketing and travelled the world. I was always proud (and grateful!) that English is the most widely spoken language with about 80 percent of the world being able to speak it. But it is not the real lingua franca any more. The most popular language comprises 0s and 1s--the binary language of computers. GB Shaw said America and England were 'separated by the same language,' but the binary language unites the world.
What's more, the two binary languages of DNA nucleotide pairing and computer coding are set dominate the coming decades in a combination of genomics and computer science. David Baltimore said that Biology is today an information science. Indeed, Bioinformatics combines life and computer science so that they are as interlocked as the strands of DNA.
We will see if genomics lives up to its promise, of course. As another scientist, Neils Bohr, said: 'Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.' Even the exquisite DNA translation process sometimes gets it wrong and proteins end up with the wrong amino acids, impairing their function. Indeed the majority of DNA itself is regarded as 'junk', because it seems to have no function. All of this all sounds a bit like computer code and its creation, another systematic human process.
I have been fascinated by interface between man and machine for more than 30 years. Now it seems more alluring than ever.
Last week BBC's Click programme showed (6m 38s) a one year old iPad user confused by a print magazine where she couldn't 'flick' the pages: a sign of the times.
A few years ago there was a kerfuffle in healthcare IT. A study at the Childrens Hospital of Pittsburgh concluded that mortality rates had increased with the implementation of Computerised Physician Order Entry System (CPOE). Despite being rebutted almost immediately after publication, the study gained wide credibility. It was still being quoted without qualification by a prominent academic at a UK healthcare IT conference a couple of years ago.
A former Apple CEO says healthcare missed the PC and Internet revolutions. He loads the blame squarely on the shoulders of reluctant doctors.
'Bots are back. It's a while since I wrote about them--for example, see here for a collection of musings--and in the interim they seem to be moving into the mainstream.
This is the topic of my new blog post on HealthWorks Collective. Already received lots of traffic on Twitter and lots of views. Would like to see more about mobile standards in health care from Motorcycle Guy and others.
I am glad that Delicious is still around and being enhanced. I have used it for years to organize and tag my bookmarks. Now with almost 1200 bookmarks and several hundred tags, I often search my links to find a resource for a presentation or article. Recent links include:
Like others (see Daniel Kraft) , I have my own opinions about what trends will be most influential for health IT in 2012.
There are many more but these are the primary one’s I will be following.
There are many top 10 predictions for 2012 out there. I could probably add my own for eHealth and mHealth.
These 10 Business Intelligence Trends for 2012 from Tableau Software apply to healthcare as much as any business.
In addition to having a great year traveling and presenting, I had additional accomplishments:
It was a big year for traveling to conferences:
| Healthcare IT, also known by the acronym HIT, is all about using information technology solutions such as hardware, networking, and software to help improve healthcare, save lives, reduce costs, and improve profit margins for healthcare organizations. Healthcare IT has always been important but recently it has been receiving more attention because the government and consumers (patients) | are demanding better service from care providers and healthcare IT is a good way to improve service.The healthcare system, especially in the USA, has some critical problems such as nurse and physician shortages, spiraling costs, poor consumer (patient) service, and lower revenues which lead to mergers | or acquisitions. Healthcare IT is in even worse shape because outdated infrastructure, legacy architectures, and monolithic applications prevent positive change from occurring. Healthcare IT can, if used properly, help reduce costs, improve care provider productivity (which can then alleviate some of the shortages), and significantly improve customer service to patients. |
