HIMSS Analytics recently released a new report on the barriers, challenges and opportunities of healthcare information exchange (HIE). The report, sponsored by ASG, examines the current state of information exchange among U.S. hospitals and explores the opportunities for improving the collection and exchange of patient data.
Survey respondents – 157 senior hospital information technology (IT) executives – indicated that there are two major challenges in the collection and sharing of patient information despite high levels of HIE participation:
Healthcare facilities that are participating in some form of health information exchange organization (HIO) reported difficulties in exchanging patient information in robust, meaningful ways.
Additionally, respondents indicated sharing information outside of HIOs is constrained by budget limitations and staffing resources.
More than 70 percent of respondents reported that their organization was part of a HIO, meaning that they participate in HIE with other hospitals and health systems. Approximately half of those respondents also reported improved access to patient information. However, the benefit did not result in robust data sharing, as 49 percent of the respondents cited this as the primary challenge to sharing patient information.
The Hill Country Health and Wellness Center is a small clinic located in the rural community of Round Mountain in Northern California. California is home to Hollywood and startups that enjoy incentives to start an LLC in California. The Center, which opened in a trailer in the 1980s, continues to reflect its founder’s passion for helping the area’s rural, largely underserved population. From that humble beginning, with one doctor and one nurse working without pay, the clinic today is housed in a modern building, with 90 employees.
The Center’s provider staff, consisting of two MDs, three mid-levels and three dentists sees about 3,700 patients per year — most of whom drive 30 miles or more for care.
All of the Center’s providers are in different stages of earning meaningful use incentive payments. The physician and nurse practitioners have each attested to Medi-Cal’s Adopt, Implement, Upgrade (AIU) incentive program.
The Center, which has been live on its EHR since June 2012, uses GE Centricity.
Despite the government doling out billions for the advancement of healthcare information technology (HIT) through the electronic health record (EHR) Medicare and Medicaid incentive programs, the shift toward adoption of EHR has not picked up as rapidly as expected.
A deeper study into the issue reveals that physicians and healthcare providers, who are normally at ease in incorporating cutting edge technology into their work, are facing a plethora of problems because of the government’s incentive programs. A hasty implementation of certified EHR, which were provided by hundreds of vendors, resulted in physicians buying tools that were not optimized to meet a individual user’s needs. As a result, instead of facilitating providers, these tools have had a negative impact on their workflows, decreasing efficiency.
HIMSS Analytics released the results of the first HIMSS workforce survey, sponsored by Medix IT, which examines hiring trends and barriers for healthcare provider organizations and IT vendors. The report, based on a survey of 224 executives working for hospital/healthcare system IT and vendor organizations, provides human resource leaders insights into the current hiring environment, recruitment and retention tactics, hiring plans for 2013 and resources currently employed by health IT providers and vendors.
“As healthcare organizations become increasingly sophisticated with their IT initiatives, human resource leaders are experiencing a new set of hiring challenges,” said Jennifer Horowitz, senior director of research for HIMSS Analytics. “By identifying those challenges and hiring trends, we hope this new report will be considered a resource for career development professionals as they plan their strategic personnel efforts.”
More than 85 percent of survey respondents indicated that their organization hired at least one employee in 2012. Only 13 percent reported implementing layoffs during the same time frame. While the health IT hiring environment has been very positive for both healthcare provider organizations and vendors, vendors were more likely to report hiring staff than were healthcare providers. Looking ahead, 79 percent of organizations also plan to hire additional staff in the coming year.
After having spent several days in a hospital recently caring for a loved one, I can unequivocally say that there is no comparison for patient engagement – in relation to meaningful use and in regard to health IT such as EHRs – between the hospital setting and the ambulatory practice.
Simply put, there is no comparison between the amount of attention given to the topic of patient engagement in ambulatory practice and in hospital care, at least as far as the patient experience is concerned.
As a patient, I sat in the exam room awaiting the results of my labs and tests. From my perspective, there was a great deal on the line – my personal health and possibly my longevity.
I sat alone — waiting for the nurse to come in to begin the initial check-in phase — taking in the sterile room, its beach-themed art and the blank flat-screen monitor near me on the counter.
After several minutes alone, pondering my fate and driving myself further into a place of stress, the nurse finally entered the room.
We exchanged pleasantries. Hellos and how are yous.
With that, she turned from her back to me, keyed in a few strokes and began to enter data into the practice’s EHR.
The NSA and federal government spying dragnet has filled the news cycle and brought to light the government’s programs that spy on U.S. citizens. Effectively, the feds are collecting every American’s data, from emails, phone calls, Tweets, Facebook pages, Google search and whatever else they can get their hands on, which begs the question: If the government is freely collecting the data of every citizen of the United States – the FBI recently admitted to spying on American using drones on American soil – why them would the data collection stop with these communication methods? Why not continue the collection of data that’s gathered through our medical records through that’s being collected through several efforts, including the meaningful use program.
All of that aside, more information than we can fathom is going to be collected about each of us once Obamacare takes effect next year, which will be siphoned off through several agencies to ensure we’re vetted for the new national healthcare program.
Recently, Datamark, a provider of digital mailroom, data entry and document processing services, sponsored a webinar hosted by Creative Healthcare, a provider of performance improvement solutions including Six Sigma, Lean and ISO 9001, who gathered together several healthcare leaders to discuss data management and the use of electronic health records and how those systems are changing the way their hospitals practice and administer care.
Though the group shared a variety of experiences about the use of EHRs, the comments – both good and bad – seemed to reach a consensus among the group. As such, each of the comments about ease of use and even innovation are hard to ignore. Nor can we dismiss the fact that the issues shared by this group are not experienced by many of their colleagues at hospitals throughout the country.
However, there were some surprising candor from the participants of the roundtable. One of the most surprising opinions expressed was by Shawn Shianna, MD of FHN Healthcare, of Freeport, Ill.: “Most of us feel we’re being forced to this (implement and use EHRs).”
