If you are still thinking about your strategy for Meaningful Use, I want you to stop right now and write me a check for $5,000 for every physician in your practice. I promise I’ll put the money to good use. This is conceptually what happens if you don’t act immediately. You have just given away […]
Posts Tagged ‘Electronic Health Record’
Decreasing Healthcare Costs with BI – Can Your EHR Deliver?
The U.S. healthcare industry has come head-to-head with tremendous challenges that have the potential to cripple the industry and reap havoc on multiple stakeholders, whose different interests and incentives have made change and progress difficult. However, a new era of data-driven healthcare is emerging as players are starting to explore the power of “big data.” […]
EHRs, Analytics, Utilization and Population Health
Spurred on by Meaningful Use, there has been an explosion in the implementation of EHRs over the last several years. This tidal wave has been sweeping through the healthcare community, sucking up much of the available bandwidth that organizations have to deal with change of this magnitude. The effect is really no different than what […]
Don’t use technology to fix a training problem
Farzad Mostashari , in a meeting with the National Quality Forum in late April, says, “In 2016, it’s going to be rare to find a doctor without EHRs.” He went on to say we need to “… find people who have done it, who understand deeply what it takes and not just the challenges but […]
Using Technology to Cure Healthcare Business Ailments
A recent article in the WSJ displayed how improving the health of patients is tied to being able to see the big picture. It just so happens that to improve the health of an organization, there is also a need to see the big picture, which requires having access to data. Research has shown that […]
EHRs + Clinical Decision Support = Better Healthcare
We all know that the healthcare delivery system in the United States is decentralized. Patient information is in multiple sources and often times not even accurate or complete. This fragmented system leads to large gaps in care, contributing to poor quality, patient safety issues and increased costs. A nationwide audit assessing 439 quality indicators found […]
Do EHRs reduce test requests or make them (too) easy to order?
Two recent studies have published conflicting results regarding the correlation between EHR/ HIE usage and the number of tests ordered by physicians. First, a general comparison of the studies and their outcomes: The study Bridging the Chasm: Effect of Health Information Exchange on Volume of Laboratory Testing concluded that doctors order fewer lab tests when […]
Patient Ignorance is Not Bliss
Meaningful Use Stage 1 encouraged physicians to implement an EHR in order to capture discrete and some unstructured healthcare data with the future goal of sharing this across the industry. Stage 2 reimbursement (preliminary) will be based on the patient taking an active role in the sharing of this data. This is contrary to the […]
Will Patient based EHRs and HIEs Dominate the Future?
When it comes to healthcare there are two main problems: Quality of care and cost. It has been suggested that these issues can be solved with data – data that is available and useful but fails to be transferred and properly communicated to practitioners. If this information is properly transferred amongst providers via HIEs then […]
What’s Really Driving EHR Implementations?
Health care organizations which do not qualify for incentive reimbursement have in large part not implemented EHRs, leading researchers involved in a study published in the March issue of Health Affairs to conclude that it is the incentives rather than factors such as improving patient care which are driving EHR adoption. Under the 2009 federal […]
New White Paper! Can Stage 2 MU Create a Financial Powerhouse?
The Stage 2 Meaningful Use objectives defined in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act may be the best first step toward more robust healthcare provider analytics and reporting. However, the beauty of these tools is not limited to meeting regulatory mandates alone. These data analysis and reporting requirements can usher […]
Is Stage II of Meaningful Use just what the Doctor Ordered?
The newest announcement regarding Meaningful Stage II requirements was made on February 22, 2012, and met an equal balance of fanfare and disappointment from the healthcare sector. Apparently, a fair number of players were hoping that Stage II of Meaningful Use would raise the bar to better tie HIT adoptions, such as EHRs, to improvements […]