Here are a few I have come across this week.
Note: Each link is followed by a title and a paragraph or two. For the full article click on the link above title of the article.
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Physicians support EHR use, but privacy breaches remain an issue
Although physicians support the use of electronic health records, concerns about potential privacy breaches remain an issue, according to two research articles published in the January 2010 issue of the Journal of the American Informatics Association (JAMIA), in its premiere issue as one of 30 specialty titles published by the BMJ (British Medical Journal) Group, UK.
One published study is based on views of more than 1,000 family practice and specialist physicians in Massachusetts who were asked whether they thought electronic health information exchange (HIE) would drive down costs, improve patient care, free up their time and preserve patient confidentiality. They were also asked whether they would be willing to pay a monthly fee to use the system.
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http://govhealthit.com/newsitem.aspx?nid=72733
Decision on tougher lab data standards put off to January
By Mary Mosquera
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
If the Department of Health and Human Services publishes a rule defining the meaningful use of electronic records this month, as expected, health providers will still have to wait for a key policy decision on standards to use to exchange lab test results.
Dr. David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health IT, yesterday asked the advisory Health IT Policy Committee to defer until January a decision on whether to allow temporary variations in those standards to be used.
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http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/HIE_viability_survey_research_RHIO-39535-1.html
What Makes HIEs Viable?
HDM Breaking News, December 17, 2009
Results from a national survey of regional health information organizations show simplicity and early funding commitments from participants improve viability of the initiatives.
Researchers from Harvard University, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Boston Veterans Affairs Hospital surveyed all known RHIOs in the United States in mid-2008. They examined two main outcome measures: whether the RHIO was operational and the percent of operating costs covered by revenue from participants.
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http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20091218/REG/312189986
New technology a 'push' toward EHR future
By Joseph Conn / HITS staff writer
Posted: December 18, 2009 - 5:59 am EDT
There is a push going on for push messaging, a likely first step in rolling out a proposed national health information network in time for healthcare organizations to use electronic health-record systems in a “meaningful manner” and qualify for federal EHR subsidy payments under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
In late October, David Blumenthal, head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS called for pause in the planning of the NHIN.
Earlier this week, in testimony before a federal healthcare IT advisory panel, on blogs and postings to online discussions, what is beginning to emerge is the outline of what the healthcare IT world was put on hold to wait for, an outline of a “lighter” NHIN than has been the focus of much planning and development work in the past.
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http://www.e-health-insider.com/news/5480/ehrs_deliver_soft_benefits_for_hard_cash
EHRs deliver soft benefits for hard cash
16 Dec 2009
Electronic health record and e-prescribing systems deliver benefits such as safer and more convenient services, but only over long periods of time and with a net increase in spending, a major European study has concluded.
The final report of the European Commission EHR IMPACT study pulls together more than 700 indicators of cost and benefit derived from detailed case studies of 11 EHR and e-prescribing systems in use in Europe, the US and Israel.
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Keeping a SHARP Focus on Innovation
December 18, 2009
A Message from Dr. David Blumenthal, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
Today the Obama administration announced the availability of $60 million in Recovery Act funds to support the development of the Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) program. SHARP awards will fund research focused on identifying technology solutions to address well-documented problems impeding broad adoption of health information technology (health IT). By helping to overcome key challenges, the research will also accelerate progress towards achieving nationwide meaningful use of health IT.
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http://www.ehiprimarycare.com/news/5463/stalis_standalone_e-discharge_summary
Stalis standalone e-discharge summary
11 Dec 2009
Stalis has launched a clinical e-discharge solution to allow NHS trusts that do not have discharge summary functionality built into their patient administration system to produce immediate summaries for patients.
The company has made the CareXML/eDS product available after finding that many trusts are unlikely to hit the government’s April 2010 target for delivering discharge summaries to GPs within 24 hours.
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http://www.who.int/goe/ehir/2009/15_december_2009/en/index.html
15 December 2009
eHealth Worldwide
:: China - E-health in China, our practice and exploration. (8 December 2009 - IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society)
China started to pay more attention to regional and national health information network construction after the SARS epidemic outbreak in 2003. The Chinese government marks the public health system construction as the most urgent part of national medical reform, with information and computer tech-nology(ICT) being considered as the key of deploying regional collaborative medical service(RCMS), which is also known as e-Health. In this paper, we firstly analyze the difficulties of carrying out e-health projects in China and then present the active attempts, finally a case representing current progress is presented and studied.
Heaps more follows.
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http://www.information-management.com/news/health_information_exchange-10016678-1.html
Are HIEs the Answer?
Alternatives to regional health information exchanges are emerging
Information Management Online, December 9, 2009
The numbers are daunting. Nearly two decades after the advent of community health information networks and more than five years after the Bush Administration starting pushing for electronic health records and health information exchanges, only 28 states have one or more operational HIEs. And operational doesn't mean everyone in a region, much less a state, is active in the HIE.
In a nation of 300 million residents over 3.5 million square miles, there are 193 HIEs in various stages of development, according to eHealth Initiative, a Washington-based industry advocacy organization. By self-attestation, 57 of the HIEs are operational. Most HIEs don't have a sustainable business model, and getting a critical mass of regional stakeholders to cooperate in exchanging their data remains an extremely difficult proposition.
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Top 10 Smartphone App Trends for 2010
Cynthia Johnson, December 11, 2009
Many chief information officers have smartphones on the top of their 2009 wish list. The compact mobile devices combine online access to information with PDA (personal digital assistant) functionality, making them perfect for on-the-go clinicians.
According to a report by market-research firm Manhattan Research, the number of physicians who own smartphones will increase from 64% to 81% by 2012. The October 2009 report states that the ability to complete tasks remotely will become even more indispensible to physicians in the future.
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Facilities Use Cloud Computing to Share Radiology Images
Carrie Vaughan, for HealthLeaders Media, December 15, 2009
It started with a simple goal: to send radiology images to healthcare facilities throughout Montana in a manner that was cheaper and more efficient than using FedEx to mail CDs overnight. About 30 healthcare organizations in Montana joined the grassroots organization called the Image Movement of Montana.
The group needed a solution that would work not only for more tech savvy facilities with picture archiving and communications systems, but also for folks who don't have PACS and would need to access images on a PC, says Gayle Knudson, radiology manager at Great Falls Clinic and IMOM co-founder.
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Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Nurses Claim Their Seat at the Health IT Decision-Making Table
Many of the policy discussions about health IT appear to focus almost exclusively on how such systems might affect physicians and physician workflow. We're hearing a lot about computerized physician order entry systems, physician performance measurement and physician incentives for electronic health record adoption.
But what about nurses?
Although they might not get as much press time, nurses are actively taking a seat at the table and participating in federal discussions about best practices, standards and the meaningful use of EHRs.
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Patient consent and 'granular' privacy control ties
By Joseph Conn / HITS staff writer
Posted: December 14, 2009 - 11:00 am EDT
Part two of a two-part series (Access part one):
The online culture is changing, shifting toward affording individuals more control over their personal information, as evidenced by the rollout last week of revisions to the privacy and security policies and technological framework by Facebook, a popular personal media site.
Privacy and IT industry experts interviewed for this story say the fine-grained levels of personal control incorporated by Facebook demonstrate a "proof of concept" that a similar, so-called "granular" consent-management system could provide a template for personalized privacy protection in the healthcare industry.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hHDt7MH7Tw3xYTQXK908rSk2zcNgD9CGNKJG0
Sens. move to block drugmakers from mining Rx data
By MATTHEW PERRONE (AP) – 4 days ago
WASHINGTON — Drug companies would no longer be able to mine pharmacy records to track which doctors are prescribing their medications, under a proposal unveiled Thursday by two Senate Democrats.
The amendment to the Senate health care bill would effectively ban pharmaceutical data mining, the drug company practice of buying prescription records to target sales pitches to doctors.
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http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/missouri-hospital-saves-lives-virtual-icu-technology
Missouri hospital saves lives with virtual ICU technology
December 11, 2009 | Diana Manos, Senior Editor
JEFFERSON CITY, MO – St. Mary's Health Center, an SSM Health Care facility in Jefferson City, Mo., reports success with the use of a virtual ICU program, used in conjunction with its in-house program.
At the Institute for Healthcare Improvement National Forum, Dec. 9-12 in Orlando, Fla., executives from St. Mary's announced results of its virtual use of ICU technology to improve mortality rates, lengths of stay and quality measures. Since St. Mary's launched its use of virtual ICU technology in 2006, ICU mortality dropped by 24 percent after one year; cardiac arrests plunged by 69 percent; ICU patient total length of stay fell by 14 percent; and there were no cases of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) since the program's inception.
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http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/electronic-health-records-not-panacea-researchers-say
Electronic health records not a panacea, researchers say
December 14, 2009 | Diana Manos, Senior Editor
LONDON – Large-scale electronic health record projects promise much, but sometimes deliver little, according to a new study.
In a study published Monday in the U.S. journal Milbank Quarterly, researchers at the University College of London (UCL) said they identified fundamental and often overlooked tensions in the design and implementation of EHRs. The study was based on findings from hundreds of previous studies from all over the world.
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http://www.milbank.org/quarterly/8704feat.html
Tensions and Paradoxes in Electronic Patient Record Research: A Systematic Literature Review Using the Meta-narrative Method
Trisha Greenhalgh, Henry W.W. Potts, Geoff Wong, Pippa Bark, and Deborah Swinglehurst
University College London
Context: The extensive research literature on electronic patient records (EPRs) presents challenges to systematic reviewers because it covers multiple research traditions with different underlying philosophical assumptions and methodological approaches.
Methods: Using the meta-narrative method and searching beyond the Medline-indexed literature, this review used “conflicting” findings to address higher-order questions about how researchers had differently conceptualized and studied the EPR and its implementation.
Findings: Twenty-four previous systematic reviews and ninety-four further primary studies were considered. Key tensions in the literature centered on (1) the EPR (“container” or “itinerary”); (2) the EPR user (“information-processer” or “member of socio-technical network”); (3) organizational context (“the setting within which the EPR is implemented” or “the EPR-in-use”); (4) clinical work (“decision making” or “situated practice”); (5) the process of change (“the logic of determinism” or “the logic of opposition”); (6) implementation success (“objectively defined” or “socially negotiated”); and (7) complexity and scale (“the bigger the better” or “small is beautiful”).
Conclusions: The findings suggest that EPR use will always require human input to recontextualize knowledge; that even though secondary work (audit, research, billing) may be made more efficient by the EPR, primary clinical work may be made less efficient; that paper may offer a unique degree of ecological flexibility; and that smaller EPR systems may sometimes be more efficient and effective than larger ones. We suggest an agenda for further research.
Keywords: Systematic review, electronic patient records, innovation.
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Medco to pay pharmacists for closing medication loop
December 14, 2009 — 3:19pm ET | By Neil Versel
Pharmacy benefits manager Medco Health Solutions will deliver electronic alerts to pharmacies for patients who may not be following their doctors' orders and pay as many as 100 pharmacists in Illinois for coordinating care with physicians and counseling patients with chronic conditions. Medco also will work with the Illinois Pharmacists Association, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) College of Pharmacy and Mirixa, a pharmacy-based patient care network, to study the efforts to close gaps in medication adherence over the course of a 26-week trial period.
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Quaid draws attention to health IT, but do people really care?
December 14, 2009 — 11:52am ET | By Neil Versel
Editors Choice
I've been thinking for some time now that in our celebrity-driven culture, it would take a big Hollywood name to latch on to health IT in order to get the masses--and the mainstream media--to make the connection between information technology and patient safety. A few candidates had been involuntarily brought to the fore with regards to EMR security breaches--Britney Spears, George Clooney and the dearly departed Farrah Fawcett come to mind--but I've been waiting for Dennis Quaid to make a splash.
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Health smart card progress stalls
Johannesburg, 14 Dec 2009
Health MEC Qedani Mahlangu has instructed lawyers to appeal the court's decision and prevent any payouts to the private consulting firm.
The Gauteng Health Department has been instructed to pay over R40 million to 3P Consulting for breach of contract and outstanding payments – delaying any decisions on the progress of its R609 million health smart card tender.
Health MEC Qedani Mahlangu noted that she would fight the decision of the Gauteng South High Court, and added that the money the department would have to pay 3P consulting would affect other projects.
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http://www.hc2d.co.uk/content.php?contentId=13541
iSoft ORMIS for Leicestershire provider
16th December 2009
NHS Leicestershire County and Rutland Community Health Services has implemented a wireless electronic patient record system which will provide paper-free processes in operating rooms across five of its hospitals.
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Enjoy!
David.
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