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

A house is only as strong as the foundation on which it’s built. And an application environment is only as sound as the network infrastructure and data center upon which it rests. As such, Will Showalter and Sisters of Mercy Health System have undertaken a rebuild of their foundation to support the more than 4,000 [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Sisters of Mercy Health System VP & CIO Will Showalter, Chapter 3: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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 [...]

I expected this past weekend to be devoted to thinking about final MU changes, however my attention was drawn to the announcement about Verizon’s entry into the HIE arena. It appears Verizon has launched a Web-based health exchange, something of which I have been advocating for the past year or so, and teamed up with several other players to make it work. MedVirginia, a private health exchange operated in Virginia; Medfx, a company knowledgeable in cloud based health care and practice management solutions; and Oracle for its transaction systems, databases and indices. It’s a good model, as it provides knowledge in the practical operation of an exchange and technology necessary to power it across the Web. But it seems to me the new offering — as bold as it is — has missed a critical component. All of this effort is aimed at moving data from one point to another, but where is the skill set to use that data to transform the way providers deliver care, and what metrics will be used to assess quality?

Though there are thousands of Meditech hospitals, only a handful are in the in the process of migrating from the Magic to 6.0 platform. Of course, those hospitals (and their CIOs) are being watched very closely by the Meditech community. One of those CIOs is Ed Ricks of Beaufort Memorial Hospital. Ricks is not only [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Beaufort Memorial Hospital VP of IS & CIO Ed Ricks, Chapter 3 [9:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (157)

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.

Managing 512 interfaces isn’t easy. That’s why Daniel Barchi, SVP and CIO with Carilion Health System, was more than happy to embark on the search for a single integrated EMR a few years ago. After an intensive selection process — which included copious input from clinicians — the health system selected Epic. And from that [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One-w/Carilion Health System SVP and CIO Daniel Barchi, Chapter 3 [11:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (120)

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)

I felt compelled to write a few paragraphs about the most recent Leapfrog report that just came out on CPOE systems (full report right here on healthsystemcio.com), and their failure in repeated testing to catch a vast preponderance of errors that they should have caught. Leapfrog revealed that it had tested CPOE systems at 214 [...]

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)

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 [...]

It didn’t take an act of Congress to start Carol Dresser and Hallmark Health implementing advanced clinical technologies. Hallmark — which includes Lawrence Memorial Hospital, Melrose-Wakefield Hospital, Hallmark Health Cancer Center and Hallmark Health Medical Center — is now working to increase adoption of CPOE and perfect its bedside bar coded medication administration processes. What [...]

 

 PODCAST: One-on-One w/Hallmark Health VP of IS Carol Dresser, Chapter 3 [10:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (129)