Health Information Exchange or HIE is the movement of health care information electronically across organizations within a region or community. HIE provides the capability to electronically move clinical information between disparate health care information systems while maintaining the integrity of the information being exchanged. The goal of HIE is to facilitate access to and retrieval [...]

The Director of Electronic Medical Record Systems is accountable for leading the efficient installation and project management of the Network’s Electronic Medical Record. This includes coordinating all tasks, overseeing the testing and install of all systems required to provide input or output to/from the EMR, and enforcing project management, budget and change control. Collaborative, effective interaction with vendors, Department Directors, Physicians, and Executives is essential.

Physician Services Company Announces Meaningful Use Service for Doctors DAYTONA BEACH, Fla., April 26 /PRNewswire/ — WorkSmart MD, a Florida based physician services company, announces the launch of Offsite Practice Support and Meaningful Use consulting services for doctors. The company’s services facilitate cost effective and easy transition from paper-based medical records to electronic. On February [...]

It’s estimated that fewer than 7% of providers in the small physician practice (1-10 physicians) have adopted and are successfully demonstrating use of electronic health record system. The reasons vary from cost to fears and myths about the “inefficiencies”, and concerns that “the government still hasn’t told us what the standards are.” Doctors and other [...]

Electronic medical records (EMRs) have a bad reputation among many physicians for generating progress notes that are so verbose and filled with standard phrases that they are nearly useless to other physicians, and even to the physician who produced the note in the first place. This is in part because rather than engineering the EMR to produce a note intentionally efficient and effective for users looking at the note on a computer monitor, many EMR users choose to create a record familiar to them from years of use of paper charts. A note documenting a patient visit really serves only 3 purposes. First it is a clinical note documenting the patient’s history, findings on exam, and the assessment and plan of care. This is ideally efficient to generate, easy to review, and have the information needed in future visits in an easy to see and understand format. Secondly the note is a legal document, providing documentation of care and advice provided, and needs to be useful in case of a legal challenge. Third it needs to document the care done to justify billing and assure payment by third party payers. A good note does all of these things. In many EMR systems the last two are done well, but the clinical usefulness of the note is very poor.

The HITECH Act amends Section 3012 (a) of the Public Health Service Act and establishes the Health Information Technology Extension Program (Extension Program).
The Regional Extension Centers (RECs) will offer technical assistance, guidance, and information to support and accelerate health care providers’ efforts to become meaningful users of Electronic Health Records (EHRs). This list represents the final 60 awarded centers.

While our representatives in Congress hash out healthcare reform, the executive branch of the government is already moving forward with aggressive new regulations aimed at ensuring the security of electronic medical health records and healthcare information systems. Whatever changes Washington imposes upon the healthcare industry, existing laws like the HITECH Act, a recently strengthened HIPAA, [...]

On February 17, 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act), which, among other things, created financial incentives for physicians and other providers to adopt and utilize electronic health records (EHR) and penalties for those physicians who do not.  The provisions addressing the incentives are known as the Health Information Technology for [...]

The reimbursement schedule for EHR adoption is aggressive.  Over the weekend, we spent more time pouring over the Stimulus Bill, (formerly known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, ARRA), which Obama is scheduled to sign on Tuesday, Feb. 17th. Within the ARRA, (Division B, page 489) is a very aggressive schedule to meet the [...]

Two key Son of HIPAA rules mandated by the HITECH Act are now effective.  Both the FTC and HHS have finalized their security breach notification requirements and have assured the regulated community that they have six months to get their collective houses in order. Please take the time to peruse both the HHS Son of [...]

Many of our readers were in the listening audience yesterday for the MLA webcast, “Cut the Cord: Connecting to Our Mobile Users.”  In the webcast, I discussed some funding opportunities, including those in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009.  A part of ARRA, is the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical [...]

To help stimulate the economy, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law on February 17, 2009 by President Barack Obama. A large part of the Recovery Act addresses health information technology. It gives incentives for hospitals and business to switch to electronic health record systems. These changes are expected to improve the quality of [...]

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, was signed into law on February 17, 2009, to promote the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology. Subtitle D of the HITECH Act addresses the privacy and security concerns associated [...]

HHS issued regulations requiring health care providers, health plans, and other entities covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to notify individuals when their health information is breached. These “breach notification” regulations implement provisions of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, passed as part of American Recovery [...]