healthsystemcio.com

With the government piling on its Meaningful Use regulations, healthcare CIOs are under a lot of pressure to bring home the incentive bacon. For some, relaxation takes on traditional forms such as vacationing, biking or running. But Deane Morrison is no regular CIO. When he wants to decompress, it’s time to scale a mountain, perhaps [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Concord Hospital CIO Deane Morrison, Chapter 1: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Building on a recent post about Peter Orszag’s resignation, and stimulus funding for healthcare IT…As long as we’re throwing money around by the billions… If I were Dr. Blumenthal, I’d dangle $500M ala DARPA in front of Amazon, Google, Nintendo, Facebook, salesforce, eBay– or any other capable body– and sponsor a shoot out: Build an inpatient/outpatient EMR and financial management system that will rock our world.

An overwhelming majority of CIOs are both pleased with how public comments impacted the final Meaningful Use regulation and optimistic about their ability to meet it, according to the July healthsystemCIO.com SnapSurvey; however a majority of those same CIOs thought it far less likely that the “average” hospital will make the grade.
And the apparent bullishness [...]

After working for more than a year to develop its Meaningful Use and Certification rules, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) are focused on ensuring healthcare providers know how to enroll in the soon-to-be-launched incentive program.
 In a “free training” session held by [...]

Can current EMR systems produce the kinds of reports that will be required to demonstrate Meaningful Use? If not, where does that leave providers? HIS Pros Says: The temporary EHR certification rule released by ONC requires certified systems to be capable of reporting the numerator, denominator and percentage for each measure detailed by CMS in the final meaningful use rule. (See §170.302(n) in the certification rule). This requirement was not in the proposed rule and was added as a response to numerous comments urging ONC to include requirements that reduce the burden on provider organizations to evaluate and demonstrate compliance with the percentage measures, as well as increase the accuracy and reliability of provider reporting.

Though HITECH may have some questioning their physician integration strategy — especially the part about underwriting EMRs using the Stark relaxations — it hasn’t deterred Inova Health and its CIO Geoff Brown one bit. In fact, Brown thinks strengthening those key relationships is more important than ever. Heartened by the industry’s move towards standards and [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Inova Health System SVP & CIO Geoff Brown, Chapter 3 [16:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (217)

Much of what will become Meaningful Use Stage 2 can be found in the recently released Stage 1, according to comments from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Tony Trenkle, who spoke during this month’s HIT Policy Committee meeting. Meaningful Use Stage 2, he said, will expand on Stage 1 by making the current “menu” set part of future core requirements. Trenkle, director of the CMS Office of e-Health Standards and Services, said the organization also wanted to get certain administrative requirements — which were included in the NPRM but dropped from the final regulation— along higher CPOE levels, into Stage 2.

While pleased with some aspects of the final Meaningful Use Stage 1 rule, CHIME still views it as “an aggressive target for the majority of the nation’s hospitals,” according to an early analysis by the organization. Additionally, CHIME is predicting that many hospitals will have a difficult time qualifying for stimulus funding in subsequent stages of the incentive program, “as objectives increase in number and become harder to meet, and as other aspects of the stimulus program become more challenging.”

All good managers know the key to getting optimal performance is not issuing prescriptive directives but communicating high-level goals, allowing the magical properties of ownership to foster a positive outcome. When people are told what needs to be done (treated like adults) they act like adults, think creatively, go beyond the minimum and often produce [...]

The final Meaningful Use regulations issued today by the Department of Health and Human Services jettison a proposed all-or-nothing program in favor of a more flexible approach. According to the HITECH Act — part of the massive American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — healthcare providers and hospitals are eligible for stimulus monies if they become meaningful users of certified electronic health record (EHR) technology. The program — which offers eligible professionals up to $44,000 under Medicare and $63,750 under Medicaid, and hospitals millions — has been developed by HHS/CMS and ONC over the last 14 months. Based on how many providers quality, the federal tab could range from $9.7 to $27.4 billion, according to CMS.

Though HITECH may have some questioning their physician integration strategy — especially the part about underwriting EMRs using the Stark relaxations — it hasn’t deterred Inova Health and its CIO Geoff Brown one bit. In fact, Brown thinks strengthening those key relationships is more important than ever. Heartened by the industry’s move towards standards and [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Inova Health System SVP & CIO Geoff Brown, Chapter 1 [17:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (246)

After 14 years with St. Claire Regional Medical Center, you might think Randy McCleese has done it all, but you’d be wrong. That’s because the CIO is just now embarking on a new core clinical install with a vendor he hasn’t worked with before — Meditech. And McCleese isn’t dipping his toe into the Meditech [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/St. Claire Regional Medical Center VP of IS & CIO Randy McCleese, Chapter 2 [8:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (258)

Stage 1 Meaningful Use certification criteria may change even after the “final” regulations are issued sometime this summer, necessitating the ongoing need to certify HIT products for the foreseeable future, according to CHIME’s interpretation of the ONC Temporary Certification Program. In what it found to be a positive development, the authorized testing and certification bodies recognized by ONC (ONC-ATCBs) can not require that integrated bundled EHRs or EHR modules be certified to a higher set of standards than the certification criteria set by the ONC.

Just like any multi-hospital health system, OhioHealth’s 16 facilities are measuring up differently when it comes to besting ONC’s Meaningful Use bar. And while CIO Michael Krouse says all 16 facilities many not qualify for every HITECH dollar, he’s supremely confident of avoiding the government’s penalty sticks. To learn more about how the [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/OhioHealth System VP & CIO Michael Krouse, Chapter 2 [15:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (150)

CPOE systems, on average, missed one half of routine medication order errors and a third of potentially fatal order errors during a study The Leapfrog Group conducted of 214 hospitals using its Web-based simulation tool. Leapfrog CEO Leah Binder characterized the results as “disturbing.” On a positive note, of the 102 hospitals that retook the test following a six-month interval, 94 percent showed some level of improvement. During the time between tests, hospitals adjusted their systems and protocols, said Binder.

Implementing a few clinical systems isn’t going to get you applause at El Camino Hospital. That’s because the organization has “been there, done that,” implementing the first CPOE system some 40 years ago. Considering that tough crowd, the CIO role isn’t for newcomers, and Greg Walton is no newcomer. With 40 years in the business [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/ El Camino Hospital CIO Greg Walton, Chapter 3 [8:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (31)

If you thought CIOs merely had to surmount the Stage 1 Meaningful Use bar to be successful, you’d be very wrong. That’s because the government has just begun enacting the massive mandates it’s planned for healthcare. Specifically, there’s a little conversion called ICD-10 that will run parallel with the mid-stages of HITECH and take more [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One-w/Norton Healthcare System VP of IS & CIO Joseph DeVenuto, Chapter 2 [11:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (73)

Just like any multi-hospital health system, OhioHealth’s 16 facilities are measuring up differently when it comes to besting ONC’s Meaningful Use bar. And while CIO Michael Krouse says all 16 facilities many not qualify for every HITECH dollar, he’s supremely confident of avoiding the government’s penalty sticks. To learn more about how the [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/OhioHealth System VP & CIO Michael Krouse, Chapter 1 [12:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (99)

Before I levy my criticisms on Orszag and the mess that his philosophies will leave behind for healthcare CIOs, you need to understand that I’m as politically liberal as they come.  I voted for Obama and celebrated in Grant Park when he was elected.  However, while I’m a spendthrift with my money, I’m a tightwad [...]

I had planned on including an expanded version of my June 5th post (HI(TECH) Anxiety) in the upcoming edition of SRS’ QuickHITs monthly newsletter. So in doing some additional research, I came across some interesting websites and facts that I thought I would share with www.healthsystemcio.com readers.
First of all, the readership of www.healthsystemcio.com not only [...]

The HIT Policy Committee’s new Privacy and Security Tiger Team workgroup is striving to establish the requirements that intermediaries in personal health information (PHI) message transactions will be subject to. Under HIPAA, parties which have access to PHI are deemed covered entities (CEs), required to establish business associate agreements (BAAs) which obligate them to handle the data in certain ways. With the rise of health information exchange under the HITECH Act, the Office of the National Coordinator created the Tiger Team to provide it with guidance in governing health information organizations (HIOs) — or third-party intermediaries which have varying degrees of involvement with the messages.

When Jody Albright took the IT reins at Overlake Hospital in December 2008, she had no idea industry-changing legislation was only a month away. And while HITECH has certainly accelerated some of her plans, Albright never expected the job to be a walk in the park. That’s because Overlake was in need of some heavy-duty [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Overlake Hospital Medical Center VP of IS & CIO Jody Albright, Chapter 1 [14:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (105)

In what has become an interesting debate among CIOs — which to do first: CPOE or bedside bar-coded eMAR — smart individuals are coming down passionately on both sides. It’s also interesting that more than a few intrepid souls are counseling both should be done at the same time, though bandwidth constraints leave that group [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Hennepin County Medical Center CIO Joanne Sunquist, Chapter 2 [11:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (50)