Healthcare IT News of the week: Hospitals' mobile strategy; surge in med device integration; meaningful use boosts care quality
Five essentials to a hospital's mobility strategy
While many hospitals' IT priorities focus on achieving meaningful use and getting up to speed with ICD-10, there is another issue which is important to healthcare providers - having a strategy for mobile technologies. Among others that David Lee Scher, a former cardiac electrophysiologist and an independent consultant, discusses are: having an institutional policy or technology that addresses BYOD; making the patient the beneficiary of the technology; and dealing with companies that offer comprehensive mobile solutions, not single products.
Health IT safety is a journey
Health IT’s impact on patient safety continues to be under the microscope and a focus for healthcare organizations. The November 2011 IOM report, “IT and Patient Safety: Building Safer Systems for Better Care,” offers 10 recommendations for improvements that rely on both public and private entities stepping up efforts to make reporting of errors an acceptable practice without repercussions. It calls for expanded funding by AHRQ, ONC and the National Library of Medicine for further research, training, and education of safe practices for the design, implementation and usability of EHRs.
Medical device integration software surges in hospitals
The implementation of electronic health records (EHRs) in hospitals is creating a need for many other technologies, such as clinical analytics apps and private health information exchanges. Another beneficiary is medical device integration (MDI) software, which connects medical device data output to EHRs. According to a new Capsite survey, 44% of the nearly 300 responding hospitals said they had purchased an MDI application in recent years. Blain Newton, CEO of Capsite, a research and consulting firm, told InformationWeek Healthcare that the race is on to gather that data from EHRs as efficiently as possible to improve clinical outcomes.
Meeting stage 1 of meaningful use boosts hospital care quality
Meeting Stage 1 meaningful use criteria helped certain hospitals improve their care quality performance, according to a study published in Health Services Research. Under the 2009 federal economic stimulus package, healthcare providers who demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health record systems can qualify for Medicaid and Medicare incentive payments. For the study, Dartmouth University researchers analyzed data from 3,921 hospitals between 2006 and 2010. They also assessed data on EHR systems from HIMSS Analytics, the research arm of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. Eric Johnson, director of the center for digital strategies at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University and principal investigator of the study, said "While it is important to have certain EHR capabilities, hospitals need to go back and improve the care processes along with technology.”
Stage 2 meaningful use final rule expected by early September
“A final rule on Stage 2 of the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Records (EHR) incentive program will be released by the beginning of September, a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services official said during a webinar Aug. 14. Moving forward, CMS will audit providers participating in the meaningful use incentive program with a focus on those providers who exhibit substantial noncompliance with the program.
Posted by Davida Dinerman on August 19, 2012 at 12:53 PM
