HHS Pumps more Funds into HIT Adoption Efforts July 6, 2010
Posted by healthcareitnews in Healthcare System.Tags: ARRA, ARRA money, health care IT professionals, health IT competency examinations, HHS, Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects
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Big schools, little schools and all sorts of lucky non-profits will bag American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) money.
Under the gun to get its “meaningful use” definition straight in order to meet the deadlines of October 2010 for hospitals and January next year for eligible providers, the Department of Health & Human Services is getting serious about HIT adoption and the serious ARRA of 2009 money is beginning to roll out.
This April, the agency announced close to half a billion dollars in grants to schools and non-profits relating to the goal of setting up widespread and meaningful use of EHR by the year 2014.
HHS announced that it’s making two awards of ARRA money to aid education and training in the HIT field.
The first is a set of $84 million awards to 16 universities and junior colleges in order to support training and development of over 50,000 new health IT professionals. Beneficiaries of these awards cover five community colleges spread out over the nation as well as five Ivy League and large state schools where the curricula to be used at the community colleges will actually be developed. Nine large universities will bag training programs to develop IT yodas and masters degrees, and one community college in Virginia will build up a set of health IT competency examinations.
The next is a set of Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) awards of $15 million each to four advanced research institutions to concentrate on solving the inevitable problems and barriers to adoption “and meaningful use” of HIT, according to HHS. These recipients of the SHARP awards are no slouches: the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston; Havard College in Boston; and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
After two days, on April 6, HHS said that it would be giving more than $267 million in ARRA funds to 28 non-profit organizations to set up HIT Regional Extension Centers (RECs), which will provide local resources for providers to get technical assistance and guidance on ways to use EHRs.
According to HHS, this round of awards brings the total number of RECs to 60 and will provide countrywide outreach and technical support services to atleast 100,000 primary care providers and hospitals within a couple of years. More than 375 million had been awarded in February this year for the establishment of 32 RECs under this plan. All REC awardees can apply for a “two-year expansion supplemental award” from an additional $25-m ARRA pot.
Did anyone say, “Too big to fail”?
Get Medical Records Transfers signed by patients and avoid glitches March 25, 2010
Posted by healthcareitnews in Electronics Health Records, Healthcare IT Industry, Healthcare System.Tags: electronic health records, Electronic medical record system, EMR
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Here’s one more instance of how a shift from paper for EMR can do away with some of your medical records headaches.
Question: A patient broke our drug contract; as such we were forced to discharge her. She paid for a copy of her medical record and brought it to one more provider. Later on, the new physician called us searching for more information on the patient. We figured out that the patient removed specific information from her file; therefore we sent the misplaced records to the new doctor. Was this a wrong move?
Answer: The answer is no from a medical professional standpoint. However, when you’re transferring a chart to a new doctor, send it directly to the new doctor, rather than handing it over to the patient. And if it happens to be a transfer, you don’t charge the patient for a copy of the chart. This way, you are assured the new doctor gets the entire chart.
Caveat: See to it that you get a signed release from the patient before you send the notes over to the new doctor.
The best bet: Check with your state’s medical associations or with a healthcare attorney in your state to figure out what exactly your state’s laws require.
EMR adoption should be a benefit, not a burden — learn how the stimulus dollars will help make it happen.
$44,000 for medical offices and millions for hospitals. The incentive is there to adopt electronic medical records. There is also a reduction in Medicare payments if an EMR is not used. But, adopting an EMR requires careful and thoughtful consideration. Let information privacy and security expert Jim Sheldon-Dean walk you through the most important issues to consider during your EMR adoption plan, such as negotiating contracts, securing Federal support, data protection and EMR implementation. Even if you are unsure about whether to adopt an EMR system, you need to know the pros and cons.
For more information on electronic health records, sign up for an e-wire.
Healthcare Medical Centre: Paper Medical Records to EMR February 1, 2010
Posted by healthcareitnews in Healthcare IT Industry, Healthcare Medical Center, Healthcare System.Tags: ARRA Grants, e-prescribing, EHR adoption, electronic medical records system, Healthcare Medical Center, Paper Medical Records
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A healthcare medical centre is dedicated to the patient’s good health, recovery and peace of mind. A medical centre would try to excel in its attempt to provide the customers (read patients), the finest care through its remarkable and commendable force of doctors and staff. Is your facility well designed to keep an eye on every patient’s comfort and relaxation? Are you utilizing state of the art technology and treatment services? Are you truly abiding by the Hippocratic Oath? Must be thinking that the last question is a bit abrupt, but let me assure you it is not.
Embracing technology definitely makes Paper Medical Records easily manageable. But this integration has not worked out well with physicians and doctors. And it is the patient who finally faces the brunt of it all by himself. That is exactly the opposite of what we pledged in the oath. So let us try to serve the patient first. Electronic Medical Records System is not such a messy deal as we physicians make it to be.
Get ready to cash in the incentives which ARRA grants promise for a successful EHR adoption. Though, the conversion and transformation has not been marvelous, but the attempt is on. It is just a matter of realization and embracing this shift in technology on a positive note. Don’t let the denial mode sink in deep with the idea of being controlled. You are not. You are just making the management of patient records more manageable by adopting E-prescribing. It is time we make the lives of our patients less traumatized and giving them a whiff of fresh air.
ARRAs EHR adoption incentive money January 15, 2010
Posted by healthcareitnews in Electronics Health Records, Healthcare IT Industry, Healthcare System.Tags: EHR adoption, EHR technology, EHRs, electronic health record system, healthcare information management
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This is something how CMS plans to define ARRA requirements. On the last day of the year 2009, CMS issued a proposed rule that would implement the incentive payment provisions of American Recovery and Investment Act (ARRA) of 2009. Payments will be offered to Medicare and Medicaid providers and facilities that adopt and meaningfully use EHR technology.
The definition of “meaningful use” is the most anticipated part of the reg. In ARRA, Congress specified that it had to be related to using “certified EHR technology that would help in the exchange of healthcare information management system with the goal of improving quality of care, which should also be measured and reported to HHS.
According to Jacqueline Klosek, senior counsel at Proctor Goodwin in New York, providers now have clear, objective criteria that they must meet in order to be making meaningful use of EHRs.
The regulation does establish clear and objective criteria as well as the tools for measuring whether the particular objectives have been met, but it cannot be said that it’ll be simple or easy for any provider or hospital to meet the criteria of meaningful use.
Electronic Medical Records System in Healthcare IT Industry December 30, 2009
Posted by healthcareitnews in Healthcare IT Industry, Healthcare System.Tags: ARRA, e-prescribing, electronic medical records system, EMR system
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As a physician practice, if you are ready to line up for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 money to help you adopt an electronic medical records system, it’s important that you keep Stark and the fraud and abuse laws in mind when you set up your agreements with hospitals and vendors.
Financing certainly is a hurdle in the implementation of electronic medical records system. If we go by statistics, only 10 percent of hospitals and 20 percent of physician offices have moved to EMR. And the sad part is even with stimulus money, adoption of EMR is very low.
The economy is also playing spoilsport as it’s becoming difficult for the providers to get the money they need to set up both hardware and software, in spite of the federal subsidies by ARRA.
Therefore, physicians are depending on hospitals and even vendors to subsidize or donate equipment to make adoption of EMR systems possible.
While the exceptions to Stark and fraud and abuse laws do not directly address financing and adoption of EMR, they are all that are there right now. One should therefore take a piecemeal approach to complying with Stark and fraud abuse laws by fitting the various elements of an electronic medical records system under those laws’ different exceptions or safe harbors.
Elements or components of an
EMR system include the official health record, practice management tools, prescriptions and pharmacy compatibility, billing and coding capability, among others.
Here is how some of them might fit under various Stark and fraud and abuse exceptions:
Information sharing: Under Stark, there’s a safe harbor when an entity provides technology to all its contracted physicians to help them participate in regional health information development. The main purpose of such a system must be information sharing that will help in making delivery of care more efficient in a given location.
E-prescribing: If part of your software, hardware or training that is donated or subsidized by a vendor or hospital covers e-prescribing of medications, you can fit that part of the deal under a Stark exception for e-prescribing.
Software: Under Stark, a hospital can donate software and training for it to a physician so long as the software is used mainly for the electronic record component.
