What must be done before you walk out of the office for the last time before the stroke of midnight Jan. 1, 2015? It’s a simple question with many possible responses. Each healthcare organization, based on its needs and priorities likely has a fix what it needs to do, though, perhaps those things are not necessarily what it wants to do. Like people, the final couple weeks of the year are different for everyone and practices are no different.
So, if you’re making a list and checking it twice, here are a few suggestions that you might want to add to it to be well prepared for the new year, based on your practice’s business needs, of course.
Review the ONC Federal Health IT Strategic Plan
Chris Boone
At Health Data Consortium, we have three must-do items before we close the door to 2014. First, we urge the health IT community to review the recently released ONC Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020. Public comments are open until February 6, but don’t let your response get lost in the start of the year flurry. Second, we are preparing for the arrival of the 114th Congress and the opportunity to share Health Data Consortium’s public policy platform for 2015. Our platform will have an emphasis on the key issues that affect data accessibility, data sharing and patient privacy – all critical to improving health outcomes and our healthcare system overall. Finally, on January 1 we’ll be only 150 days from Health Datapalooza 2015. We are kicking off the new year and the countdown to Health Datapalooza with keynote speakers and sessions confirmed on a daily basis. We’re already making the necessary preparations to gather the innovators who are igniting the open health data revolution. As 2014 comes to a close, we look forward to hit the ground running in 2015.
Ideally, turn off not only your lights, but everything — I mean every piece of digital technology and every way digital technology can connect to your organization. That is the only way to assure there are no accidents, glitches, failures or breaches. Here are some other things you can do:
• Fill every open position you can. Have positions and people identified and include backups. The only thing worse than not having a position to fill is having one to fill and leaving it open.
• Address mobility, medical devices and patient engagement, and not just from a security perspective — this is everyone who provides access, information or uses these devices or systems.
• Address the culture and have a plan to include every individual in the organization, if the technology touches them, from BYOD to analytics to privacy to cloud storage.
IT, regardless of the industry, is ultimately about people. In healthcare, it is also about the data itself, which represents your patients. It has to be there, it has to work, it has to be secure.
— David Finn, CISA, CISM, CRISC, is a member of ISACA’s Professional Influence and Advocacy Committee, and the Health Information Technology Officer for Symantec
It’s obvious from the varying responses below that there are a plethora of health IT issues affecting a number of areas in and throughout hospitals. In reviewing a number of healthcare issues, the following thought leaders offer what they feel are the top IT issues in healthcare.
As is often the case in profiles such as this, the responses are diverse and varied. Do you agree with their assessments?
I work with hospitals nationwide and I find that the top issues facing the hospital are:
1. How to align the interests of the physician with the hospital in a world where the hospital takes risk? Physicians used to get paid by “time and material” in the old world and the hospital got paid by “contracted costs.” The new reality has both the physician and the hospital getting paid a fixed amount to then manage the cost of healthcare on a “fixed price” for lack of a better word. IT challenges: The tools in the “time and material” world are unsuitable to manage the new reality in a “fixed price” world. This is a top challenge.
2. Real-time P & L — If you ask a hospital CFO what the profitability of the current patients in Unit 10, they would give you a blank stare. This is because the do not know what they are going to get paid (the DRG or diagnosis-related group reimbursement) much less what their current costs are. Thus, the lack of visibility into managing costs creates havoc. IT challenges: Systems that can develop a view into costs and projected revenue require a lot of specialized people to provide the information even in hospitals that have a partial solution. Most hospitals do not know where to turn for new ways of thinking. This is a big IT challenge.
Doug Nebeker, owner and technical expert, Power Admin LLC Staying on top of compliance and auditing tasks is a top issue facing hospital IT departments today. As more and more data moves into the digital space, IT departments can easily become overwhelmed as staff gets bogged down with the tedious task of trying to keep track of what’s happening where in the system. Network monitoring software is seeing a boom as a result, quickly becoming an IT necessity for managing increasingly complex network auditing and compliance processes. Technology is meant to help, not hinder, and so as we continue to utilize it in new ways we must ensure our process management keeps pace.
Hospitals and other healthcare organizations will always have the need to exchange “unstructured” data. While there is a large focus on meaningful use, ICD and other mandates, many hospitals and organizations are not taking into account the need to quickly, affordably and securely transmit unstructured data while also staying HIPAA compliant. One of the main issues is that public cloud services are not HIPAA compliant. Healthcare organizations can work around this by extending their existing fax server solutions to the hybrid cloud, allowing both custom and popular EHR applications to communicate with each other via a private secure network, guaranteeing delivery with military grade end-to-end encryption. By eliminating the need for costly and cumbersome network fax systems, such as fax boards and recurring telephony fees, hospitals can leverage the hybrid cloud to swiftly manage all business-critical fax communications while staying HIPAA compliant.
David Finn
David S. Finn, CISA, CISM, CRISC, ISACA professional influence and advocacy committee member, health IT officer, Symantec
Healthcare is undergoing fundamental changes in reimbursement, care delivery models and the technology required to make these changes. Technology and information is no longer an adjunct to the business of healthcare — it is a strategic imperative. This information, however, is among the most regulated and protected information under the law. The data must be shared more widely with more people and organizations, all the while with stricter security and privacy controls. At a high level, the most critical issues facing health IT are:
1. Security and Privacy
Healthcare, historically, has not invested in nor staffed appropriately in terms in of Privacy and Security. Providers and business associates need to catch up with other regulated industries and those targeted for the value of their data.
2. Data Management
The digitization of healthcare has led to the massive collection of data. As healthcare becomes more dependent on this data, the storage, protection, back-up and recovery of the data is critical. It must include disaster recovery/business Continuity.
3. Interoperability and Information Exchange
Affordable Care Organizations (ACO), health information exchanges (HIE) and new care delivery models (home care, remote monitoring and other requirements) will drive information exchange.
