Year: 2014

Maximizing Healthcare Connectivity and the Bottom Line

Sep 22, 2014• 2

By SURESCRIPTS in MARKETPLACE

Health information exchange. Connectivity. Interoperability. For the health IT crowd, these words have become staples in our vocabulary. Data exchange and accessibility are critical to improving care delivery and increasing efficiency, especially when patients move from one provider to another.

Patients’ digital expectations are growing too, their health records must be easy to share with other care providers in a secure manner. To keep up with industry demands, regulations and the pace of innovation, the entire healthcare ecosystem must continue to take steps forward in their respective – and collective – interconnectivity journeys.

According to a recent article from Health Affairs, 78 percent of office-based physicians reported adopting some form of EHR system in 2013, however only 14 percent electronically shared data with care providers or hospitals outside their own organization, which is one of the most critical pieces of the interoperability puzzle. The secure transfer of information between each stakeholder group is no longer nice to have, but a necessity – not only for the assurance of high quality care, but also for the improvement of healthcare overall.

EHR Design: It’s a Matter of Time

Sep 22, 2014• 23

EDMUND BILLINGS, MD

As reported last year at HIMSS and by many online news and opinion sources since, physician dissatisfaction with EHRs is growing. Indeed, while this blog post doesn’t focus on the broader picture, general physician career dissatisfaction is disconcertingly high.

The breakneck push for more and better EHR use as a component of regular medical care is a significant part of that malaise, but it is insufficient as an explanation. For the most part, doctors really don’t like what the health IT industry is giving them to work with. The HIMSS survey proves it, showing that around 40 percent of physicians would not recommend their EHR to a colleague.

One would expect an industry to develop better products and improve usability, acceptance and satisfaction over time. In health IT, the opposite has occurred, with most pointing fingers at Meaningful Use as the culprit for awkward workflows and Rube Goldberg solutions cobbled together so everyone can get paid in a timely manner.

It seems EHRs are taking more time to use rather than less, which was the original goal.

What Does Big Data Actually Mean?

Sep 22, 2014• 1

JOSHUA BLEIBERG

The term Big Data is ubiquitous and enigmatic. It’s so overused that it has practically morphed into a meme for using fancy math to make technology better. In a recent Center for Technology Innovation analysis of Big Data in education the term was defined as a, “group of statistical techniques that uncover patterns.” But, others disagree, so what is Big Data?

To answer that question Jenna Dutcher, Community Relations Manager for datascience@berkeley, the UC Berkeley School of Information’s online masters in data science, asked subject matter experts from industry, academia, and the public sector how they define Big Data. All of the answers are fascinating but there were several worth highlighting.

THCB Marketplace

Sep 22, 2014

By THCBist

Screen Shot 2014-09-22 at 4.41.07 PM

THCB welcomes our latest corporate sponsors:

Validic. A world of digital health. One easy connection. Accessible and actionable by you. Learn more: visit Validic.com. Visit us at booth 300 at Health 2.0. Or follow us on Twitter @validic.

Send a message of support to THCB’s community: Become a corporate underwriter.

THCB is read every day by an infuential audience of health care-obssessed readers including tens of thousands of docs, hospital and health system CEOs, state and federal health officials, investors, analysts, marketers, vendors, media types and more. Find out how.

Help the Doctor

Sep 21, 2014• 7

CHARLES KENNEY and JACK COCHRAN, MD

In recent weeks and months a number of articles have delved into the issue with a sense of seriousness and purpose that the doctor crisis deserves. Progress on reducing unnecessary pressures on physicians is painfully slow, but the broadest possible recognition of the problem is an important step toward dealing with it effectively.

We hold a basic belief about the future of health care: Solving the doctor crisis is a prerequisite to transforming our delivery system to improve access, equity, quality, and affordability. How can we possibly achieve the overall excellence and affordability in health care if large numbers of doctors are alienated and burned out?

Let’s be very clear: This is not about coddling doctors.

It is about preserving the ideals of the physician as healer and enhancing the professional experience – essential elements to optimizing care for patients and families. It is about acknowledging an honorable profession whose members deserve an environment in which they can serve patients to the best of their ability; an environment in which physicians can aspire to continuous improvement as engaged learners who embrace their role as active members of the Learning Coalition.

Traced Back to Medical School

The problem begins as early as medical school. Richard Gunderman, MD, recently authored an article in the Atlantic arguing that medical students:

are suffering from high rates of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a diminished sense of personal accomplishment. College students choose careers in medicine because they care, because people matter to them, and because they want to make a difference. What is happening to the nearly 80,000 U.S. medical students to produce such high rates of burnout?

Dr. Gunderman argues that we “need to understand not only the changes taking place in medicine’s external landscape but the internal transformations taking place in minds and hearts. … In what ways are we bringing out the best elements in their character — courage, compassion, and wisdom — as opposed to merely exacerbating their worst impulses — envy, fear, and destructive competitiveness?”

How Digital Health Can Solve Healthcare’s Data Portability Challenges

Sep 21, 2014

By DREW SCHILLER

A recent Pew Research study revealed that 7 in 10 U.S. adults track their health data (a growing number use digital health apps and devices), yet only 1 in 10 share that data with a clinician. This begs the question: in a world where consumers are compelled to share everything from thoughts on celebrity gossip to well-orchestrated videos of themselves being doused with buckets of ice water, do we have a sharing problem? Clearly not. We have a data access problem.

Patients don’t have a simple mechanism and compelling reason for sharing their digital health data with healthcare professionals. Likewise, healthcare professionals don’t have a systematic way of accessing actionable patient generated health data. This disconnect inhibits clinicians from providing preventative care, making more informed patient decisions, uncovering medical breakthroughs, and gaining valuable insights into high-risk patients’ day-to-day activities.

As an emerging and powerful market force, the personalized health movement presents an occasion to construct a revised healthcare system free of silos. We as an industry must consider this opportunity and concentrate efforts on bridging the digital health divide in the near term to avoid exacerbating, and potentially eliminate, health data portability challenges. So, how do we accomplish this?

The Case for Open Data

Recent open data initiatives such as the Open FDA, the efforts of the Health Data Consortium, and standards organizations such as Open mHealth have resulted in collaboration around how digital health data can be utilized in the provision of care. Open data programs like these are key to the future success and financial viability of the healthcare system by providing entrepreneurs, researchers, and clinicians access to large datasets and standard workflows to perform population analysis, aspiring to leading to discovery of otherwise opaque trends and causal relationships.

The Centrifuge Brain Project

Sep 19, 2014• 1

MOTION PICTURES

Required viewing.

Hat Tip: Lucien.

How To Discourage a Doctor

Sep 18, 2014• 150

By RICHARD GUNDERMAN, MD

Not accustomed to visiting hospital executive suites, I took my seat in the waiting room somewhat warily.

Seated across from me was a handsome man in a well-tailored three-piece suit, whose thoroughly professional appearance made me – in my rumpled white coat, sheaves of dog-eared paper bulging from both pockets – feel out of place.

Within a minute, an administrative secretary came out and escorted him into one of the offices. Exhausted from a long call shift and lulled by the quiet, I started to doze off. Soon roused by the sound of my own snoring, I stared and looked about.

That was when I spotted the document on an adjacent chair. Its title immediately caught my eye: “How to Discourage a Doctor.”

All I Want For Health IT Week Is An EHR Overhaul

Sep 16, 2014• 28

Robert W. Wah, MD

If I had to capture the main shortcoming of electronic health record (EHR) technology in one word, this would be it: Usability.

As we’re observing National Health IT Week through Friday, I can’t think of a better time to call for EHR systems that better serve physicians and our patients. That’s why the AMA just released a new framework for improving EHR usability.

As a chief medical officer for a health IT company and a former deputy national coordinator in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, I understand the complexities of what’s required to make EHRs first and foremost usable systems for the medical practice. When I say “all” I want for Health IT Week is an EHR overhaul, I realize that’s no simple request.

But it is a basic request. Usability should be the driving quality of all health IT. Unless health IT functions in a way that makes our practices more efficient and facilitates improvements in our patient care, it isn’t doing what it was intended to do.

What Is It With Gun Rights Proponents?

Sep 16, 2014• 170

ART CAPLAN, PhD

Why are they so afraid of public health types who want to do something about the carnage caused by guns in America?

Vik Khanna is the latest man with a gun to write squealing in terror before the kale crunching, fitbit wearing hordes of public health types who he is somehow sure are out to disarm him and, even more hilariously, have any chance of doing so.

Vik, buddy, no one and especially the roughly 28 folks in public health not completely distracted by their lack of funding and inability to secure tenure is capable of doing anything that will pry your gun from your warm-blooded grip. There is no political movement to take away anyone’s guns. The NRA is the mightiest lobbying outfit in these United States and the best Mike Bloomberg or Bill Gates are going to be able to do is to get the anti-gun lobby a few more op-eds and soundbites.

Vik stop being afraid of your critics. You hold all the bullets er … cards. Time to think harder. Do public health folks have anything to offer that might reduce the mayhem while letting you hunt deer or shoot partridge or blast targets or whatever it is you and your son like to do with your guns?

Well yes in fact there are some things from the minds of the unarmed weenies of public health worth your consideration and that of your open-carry pals.