April 2012

Healthcare IT Trends to Watch, Week of 4/23 - 4/27, 2012

Each day at Schwartz MSL, the Healthcare IT Practice shares news items on the latest industry trends, news, insights and events. Here are the recent highlights from the past week:

When our nation’s health IT chief Farzad Mostashari speaks, it’s usually a good idea to listen. In this article by Diana Manos of Healthcare IT News titled, “Mostashari: 'Keep our eyes on the prize,” he urged the audience at the National Quality Forum to put the patient at the center of care delivery. He emphasized that quality is the cornerstone of what needs to be done. Other issues included “use the  market,” “watch out for the little guy,” and “focus on what matters.”

Dan Bowman of FierceHealthIT reported on a new study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation on data use in both patient care and medical research. In the article, “Increased big data access could help lower health costs,” the authors say that all of the nonprofit organizations that study disease should collaborate to build a national health database. Future job-related health benefits packages could provide direction on how employees could contribute their own health information to such a database.

As they prepare to convert to the ICD-10 coding standard, nearly half of providers nationwide are planning to purchase an inpatient computer-assisted coding (CAC) solution within the next two years, according to a new report from KLAS, writes Bernie Monegain of Healthcare IT News, ICD-10 is the major motivator for these providers to look at a CAC solution, as they believe it can make up for some of the lost productivity and reimbursement that ICD-10 will create, researchers state in the report, ‘Computer-Assisted Coding: A Glimpse at the Future of HIM Technology.’

“While a majority of hospital CIOs responding to a recent survey conducted by healthsystemCIO.com say they are participating in regional health or system-to-system information exchange efforts, not all of the respondents have faith in such efforts,” wrote Dan Bowman of FierceHealthIT in his piece “Many hospital CIOs skeptical of HIE efforts.” Overall, 58 percent of the 174 respondents say their organizations are currently participating in regional or system-to-system HIE efforts. And 80 percent said integration with outside providers is a top three priority. About 21 percent say that while they are hopeful, they need to see more results before passing judgment.

Many hospital and health system administrators are expressing doubt about their ability to meet new EHR standards, according to survey results published by KPMG. In  Kathleen Roney’s Becker’s Hospital Review article, she reports that seventy-one percent of healthcare business leaders who participated in the KPMG survey said they were more than 50 percent of the way to completing EHR system adoption. However, 39 percent said they were only somewhat confident and 10 percent did not know their readiness level at all in meeting meaningful use Stage 2 requirements.”

We read in FierceEMR’s “AHRQ: EHR use should be increased,” that electronic health records should be adopted by more providers and by a wider range of provider types, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ's) latest health care quality and disparity reports.

Don Fluckinger of Search Health IT wrote, “iPad EHR interoperability progressing as virtualization improves.” He said CIOs increasingly view iPad EHR implementations as a way to promote meaningful use compliance among physicians, who love the device. The increase in iPad EHR use also pushes some facilities closer to joining the BYOD (bring your own device) movement, which brings its own security and compliance challenges.

And here is some perspective straight from the doctors themselves. At the recent conference of the California Academy of Family Physicians, Robert Rowley, MD, had an opportunity to give a talk on various aspects of using health IT in clinical practice. He documented his thoughts in this piece titled, “What Are the Experiences of Family Physicians with Their EHRs?” which appeared in EHR Bloggers. One talk was on “High tech, high touch healthcare,” which focused on methods to avoid having the EHR get in the way of the interpersonal doctor-patient relationship. The other talk was on “Measuring patient engagement.” In the piece, he asked such questions as “Who chooses which EHR to use?” and ”Do physicians love their EHR, hate it, or are they somewhere in the middle?” I don’t think the results are surprising, but EHR vendors should heed their advice.

Posted by Davida Dinerman on April 30, 2012 at 2:15 PM
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Differentiate Your HIMSS13 Speaking Proposal

Last month, Schwartz MSL spoke with David Collins, MHA, CPHQ, CPHIMS, FHIMSS, senior director of professional development at HIMSS, to reflect on this year’s event and get a sense for what we might expect next year at “HIMSS Changes Healthcare and the Big Easy” in New Orleans. Since then, HIMSS has opened the call for speaker proposals, which will be available until May 30.

HIMSS’s Annual Conference offers more than 240 general education sessions that are selected from a peer-reviewed process. Last year, HIMSS received 775 speaking proposals, and David expects the same or more for the 2013 conference.  Topic examples include health information exchange and interoperability, mobile health, usability and workflow, and enhanced communication between providers and patients (e-connecting with the consumer).

David said that HIMSS will still offer introductory, intermediate and advanced-level presentations, but they have provided cleaner definitions as part of the submission process to make it easier for submitters and ensure they balance information for all three audiences.

How can you differentiate yourself for next year’s selection? David offered three pieces of advice:

Offer an end user case study- HIMSS13 will continue to focus on demonstrating the benefits and ROI of what has been accomplished through a healthcare IT implementation. This means you should offer an end user as the primary speaker. HIMSS is particularly interested in case studies of how health IT is being used to garner clinical and business intelligence to impact care coordination, outcomes improvement, workflow, administrative and cost-efficiencies; increased effectiveness and efficiency in the provision and payment of care; innovation; leadership; and change management.

Get into the right category - In an effort to be as targeted as possible, HIMSS is offering 21 speaking categories, down from 23. They expanded some categories and folded some topics together.  Be sure to review the categories and their definitions. If the reviewers understand your category and see a fit, it will give the proposal a better chance of being accepted.

David offered insight into some of the key categories for 2013. “Clinical Business Intelligence” is high on the list. HIMSS has also blended “Financial Information Systems and Business Operations Optimization” together, as well as “EHRs and Enterprise Information Systems”. However, they split up “IT Infrastructure and Architecture” and “IT Standards and Interoperability.”

“Leadership and Governance” has been changed to “Leadership, Governance, Strategic Planning and Clinician Engagement.” There is also a separate category for “Patient Engagement.” Devices used to be its own bucket, but with the emphasis on safety, they found it made sense to combine “Medical Device Integration” with “Patient Safety and Quality.” The category “Patient-centered Initiatives” is appropriate for care coordination, accountable care organizations, pharma/life sciences IT and payer/health plan IT.

Additionally, the Interoperability Showcase will not be on exhibit floor next year, but rather in a separate ballroom among the educational sessions to make them more accessible.

Make your point quickly– You should assume industry knowledge on the part of the reviewers, so save your word count for the meat of the proposal. For example, there is no need to spell out ARRA and define its background. Spend more time on what the proposal will address, as well as the learning objectives and outcomes. If you are offering research and must explain your methodology, that is understandable. Either way, be sure the write-up is not a commercial for a product (even if you offer a customer, reviewers can smell a sales pitch a mile away). Make it timely, relevant, and with a real-world, practical approach.

As to the review process, to ensure a fair assessment, every single proposal is evaluated by a minimum of three volunteer reviewers, who meet throughout the summer to evaluate proposals.  The committee then selects initial proposals in early Fall. 

Good luck!

Posted by Davida Dinerman on April 26, 2012 at 1:06 PM
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Healthcare IT Trends to Watch, Week of April 16- 20, 2012

Each day at Schwartz MSL, the Healthcare IT Practice shares news items on the latest industry trends, news, insights and events. There is never a lack of opinion or reporting on such topics as patient engagement, mHealth, ACOs, EHRs, Patient Centered Medical Homes or the latest market stats, and we enjoy learning the differing perspectives of the industry’s influencers in the trades, business press and blog-o-sphere. Here are some recent highlights:

This week, we see articles about the impact of technology on people. Pamela Lewis Donlan wrote a piece in American Medical News titled, “Search is on to cure EHR alert fatigue.” She says that as researchers and health care organizations work to alleviate EHR alert fatigue, it’s clear that the answer is to create systems that take human behavior and supplemental patient data into account when writing rules that decide when and why an alert is fired off.

Ken Terry continues with his patient-centered care article in FierceHealthIT called “Patient-centered care requires more than online technologies.” Within the credo of patient-centered care, patients must be able to obtain copies of their medical records and visit summaries; they should have personal health records that they can share with their providers; they should have patient-centered medical homes; they should share in medical decision making; and, of course, the security and privacy of their personal health information must be rigorously protected.

The annual Thomson Reuters’ Top 100 US Hospitals awards revealed that hospitals listed there have more advanced levels of electronic health record adoption compared with the overall pool of U.S. hospitals, according to a report by HIMSS Analytics.

Rachel Fields at Becker’s ASC Review cited another report by Health Imaging, which states that the percentage of physicians using electronic medical records has doubled over the past two years, according to Doug Fridsma, MD, director of the Office of Standards and Interoperability of the Office of the National Coordinator.

InformationWeek-Healthcare’s Paul Cerrato discussed a recent case report from doctors at Stanford University School of Medicine which illustrates just what disruptive technologies are capable of in his piece, “Clinicians Need Unconventional IT Tools for Toughest Cases.”

Interested in the who’s who of ACOs? Read “60 Accountable Care Organizations to Know” in Becker’s Hospital Review by Molly Gamble. She says that ACOs have proliferated in the past three years, spurred by private payers' interest in coordinated care management and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which introduced the Medicare Shared Savings Program.

Nicole Lewis of InformationWeek- Healthcare reports on a study from CSC Global Institute for Emerging Healthcare Practices called, "Transforming Healthcare through Better Use of Data.” It concludes that during the next five years, healthcare delivery organizations will either gain a competitive advantage or lose ground based on their ability to make the best use of their data.

On the mobile side, Brian Dolan wrote a piece in mobilehealthnews.com titled, “Global mobile health market worth $8B by 2018,” based on a recent report from Global Data, which  pegged the global mHealth market as having a $500 million value in 2010 that will top $8 billion by 2018.

And like any other technology, medical devices, such as MRI machines and insulin pumps, are increasingly the victim of hacking, malware and other cybercrimes. A security breach of a medical device can also adversely affect patient safety, as well as the operation of the device, causing it to malfunction, fail outright or alter the data, reports Marla Durben Hirsch in FierceEMR.

Pamela Lewis Dolan also researched meaningful use this week. Her article “More physicians awarded meaningful use money” says that for the first time, physicians and other health professionals received more cash in Medicare meaningful use bonuses than hospitals got in a single month. However, Medicare Payment Advisory Commission data show that the vast majority of physicians have yet to collect a dime of government incentives for their use of electronic health records.

The healthcare IT market today is booming, spurred on by an injection of venture capital funding. PharmaBiz published an article based on a report on funding and mergers and acquisition (M&A) activity for healthcare IT sector for the first quarter of 2012 by Mercom Capital Group, llc. It states that that VC funding in the healthcare IT sector for in Q1 2012 was $184 million in 27 deals, the highest number of deals ever recorded.

If you would like to speak with a Schwartz MSL representation to learn more about how we can help you promote your company in the context of the industry’s news, please contact Doug Russell at healthcareIT@schwartzmsl.com or 781-684-0770.
 

Posted by Davida Dinerman on April 23, 2012 at 1:03 PM
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The Healthcare IT Week in Review, April 9 - 13

Each day at Schwartz MSL, the Healthcare IT Practice stays apprised of the latest industry trends, insights and events. And although there is never a lack of opinion about such topics as EHRs, ICD-10, health reform, health information/insurance exchanges and ACOs, we enjoy hearing the differing perspectives of the industry’s influencers in the trades, business press and blogosphere. Here are some topical highlights from last weeks' news:

In “5 keys to EHRs supporting next-generation business models,” Michelle McNickle of Healthcare IT News writes, “With the rise of accountable care organizations (ACOs) and patient-centered medical homes (PCMH), the spotlight has been put on IT to help make a smoother transition to those new care models. But although the partnership between patient and EHR plays a critical role in their success, Shahid Shah, software analyst and author of the blog The Healthcare IT Guy, believes EHRs have a long way to go before they can take on the full responsibility of supporting these organizations.”

Dan Bowman of FierceHealthIT.com penned an article titled, “HIMSS: Hospitals must be more 'proactive' about data breach prevention.” In it he cites a report titled, "2012 HIMSS Analytics Report: Security of Patient Data,” which outlines why hospitals and health organizations need to be more proactive about preventing health data breaches.

If you are looking to review or comment on the clinical quality measures in Stage 2 Meaningful Use criteria, they are now laid out in a handy, downloadable spreadsheet, according to Joe Conn at ModernHealthcare.com. His story, CMS posts Stage 2 clinical quality measures, links to where the CMS posted the measures and descriptions about them.

And as if we don’t have enough acronyms, there’s another one in town called ME 1.0. Jennifer Dennard of Healthcare IT News interviewed Gary Thompson, the man behind the twitter handle @CLOUD Health and wrote, “Let's Talk About ME 1.0 (and a New Way of Delivering Healthcare)." CLOUD Inc. stands for the Consortium for Local Ownership and Use of Data, Inc. ME 1.0 is the CLOUD concept of focusing on the individual and his/her information, rather than the websites into which information is typically entered.

Who isn’t surprised by this headline? “Proposed ICD-10 delay elicits mixed reaction from health industry.” As Ken Terry of FierceHealthIT.com writes: “The healthcare industry had a mixed response to yesterday's proposal by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to delay the deadline for ICD-10 implementation from Oct. 1, 2013 to Oct. 1, 2014. In a recent survey, senior healthcare executives said that a one-year delay would be costly but manageable, while a longer hiatus would be ‘catastrophic.’”

Also, in the “we knew this was coming” category, “How to Harness Big Data for Improving Public Health.” MedPage reports that most medication warnings generated by hospitals' computerized provider order entry systems are overridden or ignored by clinicians, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Hospital Medicine.

Hooray for-healthcare! Bernie Monegain of Healthcare IT News wrote, “Healthcare outpaces all other sectors in jobs growth,” based on a new report by the nonprofit Center for Health Workforce Studies at the University at Albany School of Public Health. Between 2010 and 2020, jobs in the healthcare sector will grow by 30 percent – more than twice as fast as the general economy.

I also liked Bernie’s take on “Healthcare is teamwork,” She writes that “the nation is in the midst of creating a new workflow, one based on collaboration, shared knowledge, accountability. Patients and physicians are poised for change. It may be hard, but they know it’s the way to go. It’s a way to reduce runaway costs in the long run, to improve health – and to save lives.”

Nicole Lewis of InformationWeek Healthcare cites a new IDC report titled, Best Practices: Establishing Sustainable Health Information Exchange in her story, “3 Traits Shared By Successful HIEs.” According to the report, “effective HIEs have strong stakeholder involvement to achieve critical mass of data sources; trust among the participating partners; and a plan for sustainability.”

Forbes’ Bruce Japsen has an interesting take in “New Model of Health Care Taking Root, Whether or Not Obamacare Survives.” No matter what happens to President Obama’s health care law sitting before the Supreme Court, fee-for-service medicine may still morph into a new model of health care delivery his administration is pushing that rewards doctors and hospitals for working together to improve quality.

If you would like to speak with a Schwartz MSL representation to learn more about how we can help you promote your company in the context of the industry’s news, please contact Doug Russell at healthcareIT@schwartzmsl.com or 781-684-0770.

Posted by Davida Dinerman on April 13, 2012 at 12:13 PM
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