MGMA president’s open letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius from Susan Turney, MD, MS, FACMPE, FACP president and CEO, that is an important summation of the current meaningful use Stage 2 situation facing physicians and caregivers:
August 21, 2013
The Honorable Kathleen Sebelius Secretary Department of Health and Human Services 200 Independence Ave., S.W.
Room 445-G Washington, DC 20201
RE: Stage 2 meaningful use EHR Incentive Program
Dear Secretary Sebelius:
The Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) writes today to share our concerns regarding the current meaningful use environment and diminished opportunity for physician practices to meet the requirements for Stage 2 of the program. If the appropriate steps are not taken, we believe physicians that have made significant investments in EHR technology and successfully completed Stage 1 requirements will be unfairly subject to negative Medicare payment adjustments. Accordingly, HHS should immediately institute an indefinite moratorium on penalties for physicians that successfully completed Stage 1 meaningful use requirements.
The HIPAA Privacy Rule regulates the use and disclosure of Protected Health Information (PHI) held by “covered entities.”These entities generally include healthcare clearinghouses, employer sponsored health plans, health insurers, and healthcare providers.
PHI is any information held by a covered entity concerning the health status, provision of healthcare, or payment for healthcare that can be linked to an individual.
Covered entities must disclose PHI to the individual within 30 days upon request. They also must disclose PHI when required to do so by law, such as reporting suspected child abuse to state child welfare agencies.
Andrew Gelman, senior vice president, corporate development and EHR vendor relations and general counsel of PDR Network discusses the organization, patient adherence and how EHRs may enhance patient care.
What is your role at PDR Network in terms of working with the company’s EHR vendor partnership network?
As senior vice president–EHR Vendor Relations at PDR Network, I work directly with EHR vendors to understand their systems, identify opportunities where PDR solutions can enhance their systems for providers, and developing strategic partnerships. I am the primary point of contact for members of our growing PDR Certified EHR Network,that now includes 28 industry leading partners, delivering valuable PDR services via 225 EHR platforms and reaching more than 160,000 EHR-based prescribers.
Tell me more about the PDR Network and its value proposition? What elements make it a long-lasting viable option?
As the industry leader in drug information, PDR has been a trusted partner to healthcare providers for generations. With the adoption of EHR systems the provider workflow has changed, but their need for up-to-date, FDA-approved prescribing information has not. We have developed solutions that can be easily integrated into partner EHR systems to deliver PDR’s prescribing and patient support information to their end users:
It’s rare to find an organization where document management doesn’t play a major role in day-to-day operations, and healthcare is no exception. Advancements in patient record technology have revolutionized how healthcare systems operate and have greatly improved patient information sharing between different physicians, departments and even disparate organizations.
With recent HIPAA regulations and the impending Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) mandates, which require electronic health records (EHR) adoption by 2015, the focus on technology in the healthcare space will only get stronger in the coming months, as more and more organizations put measures in place to achieve compliance.
Among the many misconceptions providers have about using a practice management software for their daily workflow, they believe that the software slows them down. A good PM software will never slow the doctor down and instead, will make their workflows efficient, save them time, remove the daily monotony of work and reduce the paper work.
The second misconception providers have about practice management software is that it makes them spend lesser amounts of time with their patients. While this may be true for those providers who still don’t know how to effectively use the software, it is entirely false because a practice management software actually allows providers to spend more time with their patients.
Milton Silva-Craig, president of TransUnion Healthcare, discusses his thoughts for the future of healthcare, payment reform, new patients and financial pressures in the reform era and changes he sees on the horizon.
How has the role of data analytics changed in the healthcare industry, especially in light of the ACA and reform?
It is no longer a nice tool to have at your disposal. It is a requirement. It is the foundation necessary to support the outcomes of reform. Moving forward, reimbursement will be tied directly to outcomes and performance. The only way to measure such performance will be through the use of data. It will be the insights gleamed from the data that will allow providers to be successful in managing the intersection of patient care and a healthy business.
Guest post by John Moynihan, healthcare segment manager, Global Industry Marketing, Siemens Enterprise Communications and Randy Roberts, vice president, mobility portfolio, Siemens Enterprise Communications.
Technology in business today can seem like a zero-sum game. When the employees win, they are able to do whatever it takes to be productive. But doing that tends to tie the hands of IT, keeping them from locking down devices and services well enough to make sure their information is secure. This situation is becoming more common in the medical industry, with clinicians and computing staff often at odds over convenience versus security. Doctors, traditionally reluctant to adopt new technology or take any risks with tried-and-true methods for caring for their patients, have taken to mobility as a duck to water.
Because access to patient information allows them to better do their jobs, doctors in particular are quickly adopting tablets and smartphones. And while they’re not ignorant of the security risks of these devices, particularly the potential for patient information to be lost or stolen, their focus is on caring for their patients. In fact, even if their business doesn’t provide or specifically allow for mobility, they are bringing their own devices into the office.
Guest post by Richard Cramer is Informatica‘s Chief Healthcare Strategist.
The widespread adoption of electronic health records has been a key objective of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. With the pervasive use of these electronic health records, an enormous volume of clinical data is now becoming readily accessible that has previously been locked away in paper charts.
The potential value of this data to yield insights into what works in healthcare, and what doesn’t work, dwarfs the benefits of simply replacing a paper chart with an electronic system. There’s appropriate enthusiasm that this data is going to be a veritable goldmine for enterprise data warehousing, business intelligence, and comparative effectiveness research. However, there are other, equally valuable, uses for this data to enhance clinical decision-making and improve the value of healthcare spending. Simply having instant access to large volumes of data that span thousands or tens-of-thousands of physicians, hundreds-of-thousands of patients and millions of encounters, offers an unparalleled opportunity to increase the quality and lower the cost of healthcare.
