EHR Incentive Programs
See the following -
A Call To Action For A Nationwide Interoperable Health IT Infrastructure
Today we are pleased to release Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: A 10-Year Vision to Achieve an Interoperable Health IT Infrastructure. This paper describes ONC’s broad vision and framework for interoperability and is an invitation to health IT stakeholders – clinicians, consumers, hospitals, public health, technology developers, payers, researchers, policymakers and many others – to join ONC in developing a defined, shared roadmap that will allow us to collectively achieve health IT interoperability as a core foundational element of better care, at a lower cost and better health for all...
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A Consulting Firm Transition to Open Source Health Software (Part 2 of 2)
The best hope for sustaining HLN as an open source vendor is the customization model: when an agency needs a new feature or a customized clinical decision support rule, it contracts with HLN to develop it. Naturally, the agency could contract with anyone it wants to upgrade open source software, but HLN would be the first place to look because they are familiar with software they built originally. Other popular models include offering support as a paid service, and building proprietary tools on top of the basic open source version (“open core”). The temptation to skim off the cream of the product and profit by it is so compelling that one of the most vocal stalwarts of the open source process, MariaDB (based on the popular MySQL database) recently broke radically from its tradition and announced a proprietary license for its primary distinguishing extension.
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AMA Calls for Design Overhaul of Electronic Health Records to Improve Usability
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 »
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Arizona Health System In The Red After Epic EHR Adoption
The University of Arizona Health Network is feeling the effects of its decision to implement an EHR from Epic Systems throughout the large health system.
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blueEHR is now ONC Certified as a 2015 Meaningful Use EHR System
ZH Healthcare, Inc., a leading provider of Health IT solutions, announced today that blueEHRTM, the Electronic Health Solution that delivers “Health IT as a ServiceTM” (HITaaSTM), has successfully achieved ONC certification as a 2015 Edition Meaningful Use EHR System through UL LLC (Formerly Underwriters Laboratories). Certification ensures that blueEHR offers the necessary capabilities to enable a provider implementing the EHR to achieve Meaningful Use. Meaningful Use is the set of standards, defined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which allows for providers to earn incentive dollars by complying with a set of specific criteria.
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Breaking Down the Role of Patient Engagement in Meaningful Use
Patient engagement plays a great role in meaningful use, despite much industry debate and conflicting interests. Patient engagement is not just a new patient-centered care philosophy. For providers and hospitals participating in the EHR Incentive Programs, patient engagement is a critical part of receiving incentive payments. Between the different stages of meaningful use and new rule proposals amending the program, the requirements for patient engagement are not always clear.
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Can Open Source EHRs Offer a New Path for Health IT Usability?
In an article published in JMIR Medical Informatics, researchers from the University of California-Davis decided to explore the small but intriguing world of open source EHRs, which may fit very neatly into the growing interest in application programming interfaces, FHIR, and other open data standards that encourage customized mix-and-match health IT development without the historical pitfalls of proprietary systems. Using data from 2014, the researchers identified 54 open source projects that met the HHS definition of an electronic health record. At the time, four of those packages had achieved Certified EHR Technology status from the ONC.
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CMS Announces New Meaningful Use Implementation Timeline
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), in conjunction with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) have updated the implementation timeline for the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs. Read More »
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CMS Promoting Interoperability in 2021: All good things must come to an end?
We have spent years involved with the management of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Electronic Health Records (EHR) Incentive Programs which were created by the HITECH Act (2009). These programs were recently renamed Promoting Interoperability (PI) programs. In a nutshell, these programs were tied to the Medicare and Medicaid insurance programs and provided financial incentives over a number of years to ambulatory providers and hospitals to adopt and use EHRs. Vendors submitted their technology products for testing and certification that they performed specific functions and could exchange data using specified message formats...But the provisions of the HITECH Act are due to expire on September 30, 2021 (see CMS timeline). These are the programs affected...
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CMS: Stage 2 And Stage 3 Of Meaningful Use Will Be Extended
CMS and the ONC have announced that the next two phases of the EHR Incentive Programs will be extended in order to provide more time for professionals to adapt to the increased requirements and give rule makers a chance to examine the industry’s progress. Read More »
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Coalition Calls For Action Against EHRs That Block Interoperability
The Health IT Now Coalition is calling on HHS to decertify electronic health record systems that require extra modules or additional costs to share data, Politico's "Morning eHealth" reports...
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DeSalvo Unveils ONC Plans For Health IT Beyond HITECH Act
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is preparing itself for the next era of health IT adoption, one that will not rely primarily on financial incentives for healthcare providers...
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EHR Usability Cause Of Key Pain Points For Healthcare CIOs
EHR adoption is increasing, but EHR usability remains a problem for end-users trying to enter and access data efficiently...
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EHR Usability, Functionality Top Concerns for Half of Hospitals
Community hospitals continue to struggle to get their electronic health records to work and communicate the way they need them to, according to a new report from peer60, with EHR usability, limited functionality, and poor interoperability driving nearly 20 percent of survey respondents into a search for a replacement EHR...
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Ensuring Physician EHR Use Doesn’t Lead to Physician Burnout
With the entire healthcare industry undergoing tremendous amounts of change — from how care is coordinated and delivered to how providers are reimbursed for that care — there are likely to be side effects. One the head of the American Medical Association (AMA) is targeting is the matter of physician burnout tied to providers having to balance the day-to-day realities of patient care with federal and state mandates regulating aspects of that care such physician EHR use and clinical quality reporting...
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