What healthcare IT departments need to know about MACRA
Fri, 8/12/2016 - 10:39amCorepoint Health0 Commentsvar addthis_config = {ui_click: true,data_track_clickback: true,data_ga_social: true,data_ga_property: " UA-317164-6 " };The first thing to understand about MACRA is that its impact is limited to Medicare clinicians. Despite this limited application, it would be well worthwhile for all health IT vendors who deal with EHRs to be familiar with its provisions, especially with regard to theMeaningful Use stipulations.The Advancing Care provision within MACRA supersedes the old Meaningful Use program.Read the full article at:healthstandards.comSome great insights into MACRA by C...
Source: NeoTool Healthcare IT Blog - August 12, 2016 Category: Information Technology Authors: corepointhealth Source Type: blogs
Why Customer-Centricity Doesn ’ t Matter As Much As You Think It Does
By JEREMY WALLMAN
Customer centricity has been a mantra of managed care organizations for well over a decade. If you listen closely, you can hear plaintive cries of our care providers, lamenting the labyrinthine, almost Kafka-esque system of prior authorization, reimbursement, meaningful use, and near-real-time obsolescence of medical technology. The crushing weight of reform, the perverted incentives created by volume-based reimbursement, and the soaring costs of doing business have created a situation, much like in public education, where our system is fueled primarily by the power of a dedicated and passionate community...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 12, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
A Visit to Oscar Health
Today I ’m in New York City visitingOscar Health, on my continuing quest to determine how best to integrate digital platforms, patient-family engagement, and care coordination in preparation for MACRA/MIPS and the transformation from fee for service to alternative payment models.At the moment, there is no single magic bullet, but there are early innovations that hold promise.At BIDMC we ’ve thought the best approach to care management is to identify a cohort with a disease, then enroll that cohort in a program which involves tracking progress against guidelines/protocols, deploying telemedicine/visiting nurses, and mea...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - August 11, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
If MACRA Fails, It Will Be a Failure of IT, Not Doctors or Regulators
The following is a guest blog by Steve Daniels, president of Able Health.
There has been a whole lot of mudslinging over the last month between regulators and healthcare providers over MACRA, which shifts Medicare payments further toward pay-for-performance starting January 1. On the one hand, CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt is clear that CMS is ready for change. “We need to get out of the mode of paying physicians just to run tests and prescribe medicines,” he told a Senate Finance Committee hearing. Meanwhile, Dr. Thomas Eppes of the American Medical Association has called MACRA a “quantum shift” and pus...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - August 8, 2016 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Blogger Tags: Digital Health EHR Electronic Health Record Electronic Medical Record EMR Healthcare HealthCare IT MACRA Meaningful Use Population Health Management Practice Management American Medical Association Andy Slavitt CMS Dr. Thomas E Source Type: blogs
ONC Announces Winners Of FHIR App Challenge
The ONC has announced the first wave of winners of two app challenges, both of which called for competitors to use FHIR standards and open APIs.
As I’ve noted previously, I’m skeptical that market forces can solve our industry’s broad interoperability problems, even if they’re supported and channeled by a neutral intermediary like ONC. But there’s little doubt that FHIR has the potential to provide some of the benefits of interoperability, as we’ll see below.
Winners of Phase 1 of the agency’s Consumer Health Data Aggregator Challenge, each of whom will receive a $15,000 award, included the following:
Green ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - August 3, 2016 Category: Information Technology Authors: Anne Zieger Tags: Clinical Decision Support Digital Health Direct Project EHR Electronic Health Record Electronic Medical Record EMR Healthcare HealthCare IT HL7 Hospital EHR Hospitals Interfaces mHealth Consumer Health Data Aggregator Challenge Source Type: blogs
CMS ’s Latest Report Is Bad News For Medical Homes
Conclusion
RTI should never have promised CMS and its readers it would identify factors associated with “outcomes,” improved or otherwise. The definition of the PCMH offered by leading “home” advocates is flabby enough. Trying to test such a wobbly concept in eight states when each state is allowed to use a different definition is just a wild goose chase.
Is there anything at all we can learn from such a poorly designed experiment? I’ll attempt to answer that question in subsequent comments.
[1] A bizarre feature of this report is the use of two control groups. RTI, perhaps at CMS’s insistence, set up one contr...
Source: The Health Care Blog - July 30, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized CMS Source Type: blogs
A List Of Must-Have EMR Features
When a doctor tells you what features they believe need to be in an EMR, it’s worth a listen. And when that doctor has personally managed the ongoing development of their own EMR, I find their ideas to be even more interesting.
Such informed recommendations are just what Hayward Zwerling, MD, has to offer. Zwerling is a practicing physician, and also the creator of the ComChart ambulatory EMR, which he launched in 1990 and kept on the market until 2015. Zwerling recently published a list of features which, he argues, should be in virtually every EMR. Below, here’s a sampling of his suggestions:
Lab features:
Provide...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - July 28, 2016 Category: Information Technology Authors: Anne Zieger Tags: Digital Health Electronic Health Record Electronic Medical Record EMR Healthcare HealthCare IT ComChart EMR Features Hayward Zwerling Laboratory Testing MD Progress Notes The Health Care Blog Source Type: blogs
POLITICO unveils claims of health information blocking in CMS emails
Thu, 7/21/2016 - 8:44amCorepoint Health0 Comments var addthis_config = {ui_click: true,data_track_clickback: true,data_ga_social: true,data_ga_property: "UA-317164-6"}; Read the full article at: www.politico.com
More than two dozen emails that POLITICO obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal in excruciating detail the variety of roadblocks — some possibly incidental, others intentional — that frustrate transmission of health data and thereby health care delivery.
The emails come from an account CMS set up last June to solicit feedback on blocking. “We would like to hear about ever...
Source: NeoTool Healthcare IT Blog - July 20, 2016 Category: Information Technology Authors: corepointhealth Source Type: blogs
A Care Coordination Innovation Intervention
By JOHN HALAMKA, MD
Would you buy an iPhone if the only apps that ran on it were written by Apple? Maybe, but the functionality would not be very diverse.
The same can be said of EHRs. Athena, Cerner, Epic, Meditech, and self developed EHRs such as BIDMC’s webOMR are purpose-built transaction engines for capturing data. However, it is impossible for any single vendor to provide all the innovation required by the marketplace to support new models of care I’m a strong believer in the concept of third party modules that layer on top of traditional EHRs in the same way that apps run in the iPhone ecosystem.
There are 3 suc...
Source: The Health Care Blog - July 20, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Care Coordination Innovation
Would you buy an iPhone if the only apps that ran on it were written by Apple? Maybe, but the functionality would not be very diverse.The same can be said of EHRs. Athena, Cerner, Epic, Meditech, and self developed EHRs such as BIDMC’s webOMR are purpose-built transaction engines for capturing data. However, it is impossible for any single vendor to provide all the innovation required by the marketplace to support new models of care I’m a strong believer in the concept of third party modules that layer on top of traditional EHRs in the same way that apps run in the iPhone ecosystem.There are 3...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - July 20, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
David Muntz Q&A: The future of healthcare will combine people, processes, and technology
Tue, 7/19/2016 - 4:18pmChad Johnson0 Comments var addthis_config = {ui_click: true,data_track_clickback: true,data_ga_social: true,data_ga_property: "UA-317164-6"}; David Muntz is a leader in the nation's efforts to modernize healthcare. He currently is principal at Muntz and Company and previously was principal deputy at the ONC, CIO at both Baylor Health and Texas Health Resources, and the CIO at GetWellNetwork.
We are excited that Mr. Muntz will provide the keynote presentation at Corepoint Connect 2016, our annual user group conference, Oct. 12-14. David was kind enough to answer a few questions ab...
Source: NeoTool Healthcare IT Blog - July 19, 2016 Category: Information Technology Authors: chad.johnson at corepointhealth.com Source Type: blogs
David Muntz Q & A: The future of healthcare will combine people, processes, and technology
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Source: NeoTool Healthcare IT Blog - July 19, 2016 Category: Information Technology Authors: chad.johnson at corepointhealth.com Source Type: blogs
How Policymakers Can Foster Organizational Innovation In Health Care
Editor’s note: This post is part of a series based on the 5th Forum: Learning from each other – Scaling ideas up to the next level. The forum was held in Berlin, Germany on June 9 and 10, 2016 and organized by the Center for Healthcare Management. For updates on the Forum’s results please check the Center for Healthcare Management’s website or follow on Twitter @HCMatColumbia.
Everyone wants a health system that produces better outcomes at lower cost, offers more person-centered care, and focuses on health rather than health care. After decades of trying, however, American health care, as well as health car...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - July 15, 2016 Category: Health Management Authors: Sherry Glied Tags: Costs and Spending Organization and Delivery Center for Healthcare Management 5th Forum Medicare DRG program risk adjustment program Source Type: blogs
ONC Offers Two Interoperability Measures
For a while now, it’s been unclear how federal regulators would measure whether the U.S. healthcare system was moving toward the “widespread interoperability” MACRA requires. But the wait is over, and after reviewing a bunch of comments, ONC has come through with some proposals that seem fairly reasonable at first glance.
According to a new blog entry from ONC, the agency has gotten almost 100 comments on how to address interoperability. These recommendations, the agency concluded, fell into four broad categories:
Don’t create any significant new reporting burdens for providers
Broaden the scope of interoperabilit...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - July 14, 2016 Category: Information Technology Authors: Anne Zieger Tags: EHR Electronic Health Record EMR Healthcare HealthCare IT MACRA Meaningful Use Health Data Interoperability Medicaid EHR Incentive Medicare EHR Incentive ONC Source Type: blogs
Dynamic Debate: Health Affairs Forum Begins Value-Based Payment Discussion
“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.” You can bet that Mark Twain wasn’t thinking about reforming health care payment systems when he spoke these words more than a century ago, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t relevant to the issue. In fact, “continuous improvement” was the overarching theme at a recent Health Affairs Forum entitled “Envisioning the Future of Value Based Payment.”
Several recent laws have strengthened Medicare’s incentives for quality improvement and accountability, including MACRA, the Affordable Care Act, the IMPACT Act, and the HITECH Act. Congress passed t...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - July 13, 2016 Category: Health Management Authors: Charles Kahn Tags: Costs and Spending Featured Hospitals Insurance and Coverage Medicare Payment Policy Quality Health Affairs Event Hospital Readmission Reductions Program Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program quality measurements value-based Source Type: blogs
