Health IT Policy Committee
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Across the Border of Interoperability
Some electronic health record vendors are creating challenges for providers by restricting the kinds of Direct messages their customers can receive or making it hard to open their attachments. According to several sources, Epic Systems, the largest EHR company in the U.S., permits its users to receive only Direct messages that have clinical data architecture (CDA) attachments. Read More »
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An Epic conflict of interest
Meet Judy Faulkner. She is the founder and CEO of Epic Systems Corporation in Wisconsin. She is also a member of the GAO Health Information Technology Policy Committee and an advisory board member of the Journal of Healthcare Information Management. She is also politically active...The $787 billion stimulus bill signed into law by President Obama in February 2009 included $19 billion for healthcare information technology (HIT), and created the Health IT Policy Committee, whose job it was to advise the federal government on spending the $19 billion allocation. The committee was to have one member responsible for representing information technology vendors. Judy Faulkner was designated as that member.
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Closed Records, EHR Decertification and the DoD
In anticipation of House of Cards Season 4, and with all due respect to the show’s creators, I think real life is giving us a perfect plotline that includes politicians, corporate interests, their lobbyists and a big fat government contract. Maybe Francis and Claire have me seeing conspiracies everywhere, but it seems a chain of recent health IT events have created intrigue in what is historically our staid, conservative industry. Follow the timeline with me and decide for yourself if I’m hearing black helicopters.
Community College Training of HIT Professionals Questioned
The government plans to fork out a total of nearly $70 million in grants to five community colleges assigned with leading a federal healthcare IT training program. But is the Community College Consortia to Educate Health Information Technology Professionals delivering? Since its inception in March, some think it’s not – at least not yet. Read More »
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Crony Capitalist Epic Systems Gets Rich by Manipulating Stimulus Timeline
Newspapers and bloggers have spilled a lot of real and digital ink in recent months over the Department of Energy’s controversial stimulus-created loan guarantee program, the now-defunct green tech firm Solyndra, and its wealthy benefactor/Obama campaign bundler George Kaiser. Too few are paying attention to the government’s push for widespread health information technology adoption, funded in large part by the stimulus bill, and key industry players exerting influence over the policy process for personal benefit. If you haven’t yet heard of Wisconsin-based Epic Systems and its CEO Judith Faulkner, pay attention.
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EHR Payouts Climb Near $25 Billion
Electronic health records incentive payments to eligible hospitals and providers have continued their upward trend, with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services paying out a whopping $24.4 billion to date...
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EHR Vendors Put Up Roadblocks to Direct Messaging
Half of U.S. health care providers now have access to Direct secure messaging through 36 health information service providers, according to DirectTrust, a not-for-profit trade association that accredits HISPs. Yet the policies of certain vendors are impeding physicians' and hospitals' ability to exchange Direct messages, HISPs and providers say. Read More »
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Establishing Trust And Interoperability In The Post-NwHIN Governance Era
At the September meeting of the Health IT Policy Committee, National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari announced that the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT was dropping its plans to issue regulations setting voluntary "rules of the road" for participation in the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN). Read More »
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Health IT Collaborative Releases Patient Engagement Guide
Healthcare providers wanting a recipe to follow to improve patient engagement within their organizations can start by looking over the Patient Engagement Framework released by the National eHealth Collaborative. Read More »
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HHS Steps Back On NwHIN Governance
HHS, through its Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, has decided to punt on its previous drive to regulate the proposed nationwide health information network. Read More »
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Marc Probst: Meaningful Use Stage 3 a mistake
"The concept and the power of special interests is alive and well, particularly when you're talking about a $35 billion program," Probst said, referring to the Meaningful Use incentive program. "The federal advisory committees tried to filter through that, but I'm not sure that was always accomplished."
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Mother Jones piece hits Epic hard: 5 criticisms of the EHR vendor
For a company that is notorious for its lack of media interaction, Epic Systems often finds itself in headlines, for better or for worse. The latest Epic media storm was delivered by a Mother Jones piece in which the author criticized the vendor and the health IT marketplace as failing in its mission to help patients and save money through digitization. Author Patrick Caldwell wrote the healthcare industry has largely underachieved in its goal to digitize medical records and cut waste and costs associated with paper records.
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ONC's structure gets flatter as its $2B stimulus appropriation ends
It should have come as little surprise that Dr. Karen DeSalvo, in announcing last week a reorganization of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, said she was aiming for a “flatter” reporting structure.
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Task force summarizes barriers, mulls recommendations to improve EHR data sharing
Patient care coordination is the "key driver" to data sharing, but there are challenges to accomplishing that goal, according to the Health IT Policy Committee's task force on clinical, technical, organizational and financial barriers to interoperability. In its Aug. 25 meeting, the task force summarized information from hearings held earlier in the month regarding obstacles to electronic health record interoperability. Some of the major barriers to interoperability include the cost to interface, the lack of standards, the lack of infrastructure and platforms for interoperability, and the lack of a forum to pull together stakeholders.
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