HDM Breaking News, January 13, 2010

Agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services on Jan. 13 officially published two rules covering the meaningful use of electronic health records provisions of the HITECH Act within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Publication of the rules starts the clock for the public comment period, with both rules having a March 15 deadline for comment. The proposed rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services defines "meaningful use" of electronic health records to qualify for Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments. It lays out a series of measures to collect and report data to government agencies. The rule is 169 pages long in a PDF format.

An interim final rule from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology sets initial standards, implementation specifications and certification criteria for EHR technology. The rule is 33 pages long in a PDF format. A forthcoming rule will establish an EHR certification program.

The rules are available at gpoaccess.gov/fr/index.htm

Labels: Electronic Health Records, Electronic Medical Records, Healthcare IT, Meaningful Use, meaningfuluse

We've made the open display unit for over 10 years. We dramatically redesigned the 2842OD to bring it together in the stylings of our award winning collection.

Labels: Electronic Medical Records, Healthcare IT, wall mounted computer cabients

by Ashish V. Shah

By several different measures, the past President and current President of the United States have little in common. But both do share a vision of transitioning the American healthcare system to the use of electronic health records (EHRs) as quickly as possible – George W. Bush backed a 2014 deadline and Barack Obama has provisioned incentives within ARRA to drive adoption by 2015.

The byproduct of this type of commitment has spurred heavy investment in the healthcare IT industry, focused primarily on the development of EHR technology to improve operational efficiency and patient care. So, why are some physicians rejecting the notion of EHRs or in some cases … de-installing them? You would think with strong Presidential support and no shortage of financial investment in the industry that penetration of EHRs into the physician market would exceed 33 percent.

The reality is that at least 67 percent of physicians today who receive information from caregivers or labs outside of their care setting depend on paper. What they care about is having timely and reliable access to the information they need – not whether it comes to them in paper or electronic format – and they most certainly won’t stop depending on paper overnight. In fact, even physicians with EHRs often must depend on paper, especially if their EHR is not interfaced to the data sources. Without interfaces, their EHRs are empty and, by many accounts, not very useful. If the EHR isn’t useful, they say, why disrupt the familiar paper-based workflow? [Continue Reading]

Labels: electronic charting, Electronic Health Records, Electronic Medical Records, EMR Workstations, Paper charting

I've posted surveys on LinkedIn about using the terminology EHR/EMR several times and got so many odd responses that made finding this post really enjoyable. Below is a great blog post from the EHR Scope Blog.

PHRs, EHRs, EMRs –Digesting the Alphabet Soup

PHR, EHR, EMR , can all make HIT a bit confusing PDQ (Pretty Darn Quick). Certainly everyone agrees what the letters in the three acronyms stand for – Personal Health Record, Electronic Health Record, and Electronic Medical Record. Yet the terms are often misunderstood and misused – even within the industry.

The two most often used interchangeably, albeit incorrectly are EMR and EHR. To the layperson and even to healthcare professionals it may sound like there is very little difference between an Electronic Health Record and an Electronic Medical Record, but there are clearly defined distinctions, depending of course on who is doing the defining.

Continue reading the article HERE

Labels: EHR, Electronic Health Records, Electronic Medical Records, EMR, Medical Terminology