Electronic health record prices and contract terms remain ever elusive, and in some case, divisive. Certainly, with more than 50 percent of all practice-based physicians using an electronic health record, there is still little clarity and open communication as to the pricing and contract structure of the very systems that physicians and their practices are mandated to build their practices on.
Having worked for an electronic health record vendor, I understand the need for discreetness to a point, as well as the fact that prices of products and terms of contacts can’t always be posted to the web or nailed to the door like an a la carte menu; however, I do believe that the process should be a bit more transparent than it currently is.
That said, I’ve asked a couple industry leaders some of the questions I’ve had on the subject and their responses are educational, insightful and informative. I hope you feel the same.
Healthcare providers, in particular, must prove that their organization and operational standards establish the proper quality and safety measures to meet strict regulation, reform and privacy requirements. However, even with “proper” protocols in place, most healthcare organizations often are unable to prove whether they have properly managed secure and protected information.
Improper user account management can lead to breeches of security, fines, penalties, lack of trust from the community and failed audits. Hospitals and healthcare providers need to take the necessary measures to ensure sensitive information is not available to employees without proper access rights. For instance, former employees and contractors who are still able to access and use a former employer’s e-mail network because their user account has not been deactivated immediately upon their departure present a definite security risk.
Across the world there are about 1.5 billion conversations an hour on social media platforms. Social media users share 30 billion pieces of content – comments, opinions, information videos, podcasts and photographs each month.
Yet just 15 years ago, none of this existed.
This means businesses have potential access to huge amounts of data about their markets, customers and competitors. The challenge is to turn these social media conversations from simple noise into intelligence from which they can extract the insights, the understanding and the warnings that will create or protect value.
Who among us that spend time working in health IT don’t think about ways to use the technology in practices to create efficiency and make work life better? However, on the other hand, how often do we think about the technologies and technological strategies employed in healthcare that just don’t measure up to much except for waste of time and resources.
Stepping back for a minute, but using that concept as a launching point, I recently asked several people this very question and the responses I received were plentiful. They ranged from implementing new solutions to make life easier for physicians on rounds to techniques for streamlining the use of email.
You see, electronic health records and practice portals, for example, are not the only solutions and approaches that can make us more productive or create productive IT throughout the care setting.
Guest post by Dan Tully, executive vice president, Conduit Systems.
“Disaster” is defined as a sudden event, such as an accident or a natural catastrophe, which causes great damage and results in unfortunate consequences. Hurricane Sandy – which as hard as it might be to believe, just came upon its six-month anniversary – still comes to mind as the most recent example of the havoc that disasters can wreak. Sandy caused an estimated $50 billion in damages and healthcare IT systems, their managers and healthcare consultancies were not immune. Not to mention the devastation we just faced with the tornados in Oklahoma.
In recent years, the cloud has emerged as a powerful tool to ensure service continuity in the event of disaster, and rightfully so – it’s swift, efficient and cost-effective. A review of cloud-based solutions today for disaster recovery is a safe investment of time, resources, and eventually, capital.
Health and Human Services recently admitted that Secretary Kathleen Sebelius solicited private support for the implementation of Obamacare programs including Enroll America, a nonprofit group devoted to expanding access that a former Obama administration staffer runs. According toPolitico and other sources, HHS says there’s no problem with her actions.
According to the report, Sebelius sought donations from healthcare companies for a group working to encourage more people to enroll in Obamacare programs. Several key leaders, primarily Republicans, say Sebelius is showing disregard for constitutional principles and may violate the Antideficiency Act — the prohibition against augmenting congressional appropriations, and executive branch ethics laws.
Farzad Mostashari recently said that 5 percent of the problem in healthcare now is people while the remaining 95 percent of the problem is systems and IT.
According the national health IT coordinator, as reported by Government Health IT, “It’s systems that let ordinary people do extraordinary things.”
However, the tools that allow us to do extraordinary things contribute to nearly all of the problems physicians and their practices face in healthcare. IT is to blame for healthcare’s problems; not lack of payment reform, overarching government intrusion, lack of research, the fact that doctors are only able to spend about eight minutes with each patient per visit, etc.
I can’t think of a more obvious statement than the one recently made by Impact Advisor principal Laura Kreofsky, who said recently that everyone in healthcare is going to hit a wall in a year or two and fatigue is going to settle in regarding meaningful use.
By 2015, we’re all going to be sick and tired of meaningful use.
