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Tag: Startups

Christmas in July: Meaningful Use as a Gift for the Consumer

Everyone was expecting the new meaningful use rules to include some important, but relatively basic advances for the consumer—and it did. However few of us expected meaningful use would include a real consumer gift: the requirement that EMRs help doctors deliver information prescriptions to each patient. That addition is a game changer for advancing the patient’s role in a patient-centered health care system.

Page 225 of the rules includes this Stage I Measure for demonstrating the “meaningful use” needed to qualify for the federal subsidy for EMR investments:

More than 10% of all unique patients seen by the provider are provided patient-specific education resources.

That simple requirement represents a sea-change in use of the EMR as a tool to advance the role of the patient. It will bring into mainstream American medicine a recognition that medical care is of high quality only if it includes relevant information to help the patient do appropriate self-care and better participate in treatment decisions.

The requirement gives mainstream life to the decade-old concept called “information therapy” or Ix for short. Ix promotes the need to prescribe the right information to the right patient at the right time as part of the process of care. The new rule promotes the exact same thing.

Continue reading…

The Info-Button Standard: Bringing Meaningful Use to the Patient

Regardless of the U.S. administration’s “meaningful use” requirements, if health information technology (HIT) is to become meaningful for patients, it must include the prescription of information and tools to help each patient better manage his or her own care.

Ask patients what they want from HIT systems, and they will tell you three things:

– “Tell me my diagnosis, what will happen, and what I can do myself to better manage the problem.”

– “Tell me my medical tests results and what they mean to me.”

– “Tell me my treatment options, and help me participate in the treatment decisions.”

The soon-to-be-finalized HL7 International Context-Aware Information Retrieval standard (nicknamed the HL7 “Infobutton” standard) makes it far easier for providers of electronic health records (EHRs) and personal health records (PHRs) to deliver just what the patient wants. And that is what will put the meaning into meaningful.

Using the HL7 Infobutton Standard for Information Prescriptions

The HL7 Infobutton standard has been widely adopted since 2007. It facilitates the delivery of a set of standardized information about the patient, the provider, and the activity of a specific care encounter or moment in care. An Infobutton manager (or equivalent) accessed by an EHR application can then pull from that set the information it needs for any relevant use case. In most cases the Infobutton has been used to bring up decision support information for the clinician.

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Open Letter to Athena

By SCOTT SHREEVEScottShreeve

Afterburner (af·tər′bər·nər) n.

  1. A device for augmenting the thrust of a jet engine by burning additional fuel in the uncombined oxygen in the gases from the turbine
  2. The augmentation of thrust obtained by afterburning may be well over 40% of the normal thrust and at can exceed 100% of normal thrust

Athenahealth is one of my favorite companies anywhere. I believe they have a great vision, a  highly capable team, an incredible business model, and an unprecedented business opportunity before them. However, for all the amor, I have been disappointed that even with all their blistering success (Bam, Bam, and Kabam!) they have captured less than 2% of the target market since the IPO. I am not just disappointed for them but for the entire ambulatory care space which doesn’t seem to readily get the value of the collective intelligence inherent in the network.Continue reading…

Washington DC conference and party!

Wednesday morning I’ll be at the AHRQ annual conference in Rockville, Maryland. I’m moderating a panel looking at “Experiences in Patient-Centered Care: Improving Coordination and Communication among Patients and Providers”. Given this is an AHRQ meeting there’ll be actual research presented from:

    • Gail Brottman, Director of Pediatric Pulmonary Medicine at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis;
    • Jennifer Uhrig, Senior Health Communication Scientist at RTI;
    • Jim Tufano, Assistant Professor, University of Washington’s program in Biomedical & Health Informatics

Of course I’ll be dragging them down to my non-academic level pretty soon!

If you can’t join the academics in the morning, you may want to come by a drinks party hosted by my friend Maggi Cary in the evening. For that one you’ll have to email me to find out a few more details!

Getting Rid of “Friction” in Health Care

Main Friction occurs when an object moving through space encounters resistance, slows down and has its forward energy diverted. In the world of health care, friction is a term that has become synonymous with paperwork.Today, the U.S. spends $2.3 trillion on health care, and the U.S. Health Care Efficiency Index estimates that we could reduce this cost by $30 billion if we could eliminate the friction of phone-based and paper-based systems.1 This is a significant savings, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is an attempt to realize that savings with a very targeted focus on Electronic Medical Records (EMRs). If all of the physicians in the country used EMRs, the argument goes, we would dramatically improve the efficiency of our health care system. The only problem is that only 17 percent of physicians are using EMRs today, so we’re talking about converting 83 percent of physicians to a computerized system for maintaining patient records, and while we absolutely must move in that direction, it is going to be a long and time-consuming process.2

“Low-hanging Fruit” Meanwhile, there’s a much quicker fix that is not getting much attention in the current debate, and that is the savings that could be realized by full conversion to electronic health care claims.  Unlike EMRs, electronic claims aren’t slowed down by privacy issues and other barriers that arise with business-to-human transactions. They offer billions of dollars of savings. According to the Center for Health Transformation, 90 percent of claim payments are still made in the form of a paper check. By eliminating these paper-based checks, the U.S. could reduce the overall cost of health care by $11 billion.3 Every paper check that is eliminated and replaced with a wire transfer saves the payer $.78, according to a study by Yoo and Harner.4 And given the fact that a few large payers – United, Aetna, Cigna and BlueCross BlueShield – are responsible for a majority of claims checks written in this country, making the switch to electronic health care claims may be easier than you think.  Continue reading…

Why Standards Matter (1): The True Meaning of Interoperability

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Americans are generally skeptical of words that otherwise intelligent and articulate people can’t pronounce.  “Interoperability,” like nu-cu-lar, is one of these. After a while, these words can take on a mystique all their own.

But interoperability is a hugely important word in the context of today’s ongoing debate about the use of EHR technology by physicians, hospitals, and patients too. The federal government is going to provide billions of dollars to encourage today’s fragmented health care providers to convert from mostly paper to mostly computerized information systems. It is critically important for these systems to talk with one another. We want health data to flow between and among these systems and to be, well, interoperable.  And it isn’t now.

So how can this word be so difficult to put into action?  Here’s a clue: a lot of people are confused about its meaning.

Continue reading “Why Standards Matter (1): The True Meaning of Interoperability”

Finally, A Reasonable Plan for Certification of EHR Technologies

A caution to readers: This post is about methods for certifying Electronic Health Record (EHR) technologies used by physicians, medical practices, and hospitals who hope to qualify for federal incentive payments under the so-called HITECH portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). It may not be as critical as the larger health care reform effort or as entertaining as Sarah Palin, but it WILL matter to hundreds of thousands of physicians, influencing how difficult or easily those in small and medium size practices acquire health IT. And indirectly for the foreseeable future, it could affect millions of American patients, their ability to securely access their medical records, and the safety, quality, and the cost of  medical care.

Three weeks ago, on July 14-15, 2009, the ONC’s Health IT Policy Committee held hearings in DC to review and consider changes to CCHIT’s current certification process. The Policy Committee is one of two panels formed to advise the new National Coordinator for Health IT, David Blumenthal. In a session that was a model of open-mindedness and balance, the Committee heard from all perspectives: vendors, standards organizations, physician groups, and many others.

And then, on July 16, they released their final recommendations on what is now referred to as “HHS Certification.” The effects of their recommendations – these are available online and should be read in their entirety to grasp their extent – are potentially monumental, and could very positively change health IT for the foreseeable future.

At the heart of these hearings was the issue of who will define the certification criteria and who will evaluate vendors’ products. Among many others, we have voiced concerns that the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT), the body currently contracted by HHS to perform EHR certification, has been partial to traditional health IT vendors in defining the certification criteria, and in the ways certification is carried out, and thereby able to inhibit innovation in this industry sector. Despite its leaders’ claims that the certification process has been developed using an open framework, CCHT’s obvious ties to the old guard IT vendors have created an overwhelming appearance of conflict of interest. That appearance has not been refuted by CCHIT’s resistance to and delays in implementing interoperability standards, or by its focus on features and functions over safety, security, and standards compliance.

In the hearings that led to the recommendations, longtime IT watchers were treated to some extraordinary commentary, much of which dramatically undermined CCHIT’s position.

“HHS Certification means that a system is able to achieve government requirements for security, privacy, and interoperability, and that the system would enable the Meaningful Use results that the government expects…HHS Certification is not intended to be viewed as a ‘seal of approval’ or an indication of the benefits of one system over another.”

In other words, as the definition of Meaningful Use is now tied to specific quality and safety improvements and cost savings that result from health IT — among them e-Prescribing, quality and cost reporting, data exchange for care coordination, and patient access to summary health data — HHS Certification will closely follow. Rather than pertain to an EHR’s long list of features and functions, some of which have nothing to do with Meaningful Use, certification will be focused on each IT system’s ability to enable practices and hospitals to collect, store, and exchange health data securely.

Who Determines the Certification Criteria

The Office of the National Coordinator – not CCHIT – would determine certification criteria, which “should be limited to the minimum set of criteria that are necessary to: (a) meet the functional requirements of the statute, and (b) achieve the Meaningful Use Objectives.” As regulator, funder for this project, and a major purchaser of health services, the government, not users or vendors, will now determine HHS’ Certification criteria.

A New Emphasis on Interoperability

“Criteria on functions/features should be high level; however, criteria on interoperability should be more explicit.” That is, functions/features criteria will be broadly defined, but there will be a greater focus in the future on the specifics associated with bringing about straightforward data exchange.

Multiple Certifying Organizations

ONC would develop an accreditation process and select an organization to accredit certifying organizations, then allow multiple organizations to perform certification testing. In other words, the Committee recommended that CCHIT’s monopoly end.

Third Party Validation

The “Validation” process would be redefined to prove that an EHR technology properly implemented and used by physician or hospital can perform the requirements of Meaningful Use. Self-attestation, along with reporting and audits performed by a Third Party, could be used to monitor the validation program.

Broader Interpretation of HHS Certification

HHS Certification would be broadly interpreted to include open source, modular, and non-vendor EHR and PHR technologies and their components.

These bold, forward-thinking proposals from the HIT Policy Committee have not been accepted yet. But in our opinion they should be. These measures would encourage new technologies to enter the market for physician medical practices seeking EHR technology, and wrest control away from the legacy health IT vendors that have maintained barriers and delayed adoption, so you can be sure that the old guard players are doing everything possible to have them rejected.

But these are hugely progressive steps in the right direction, toward allowing HIT to enable improvements in care and cost efficiencies that would be in the best interests of users and the public at large. If implemented, the changes recommended by the HIT Policy Committee would create greater choice, more standardization, lower price, less interruption of the practices — as well as a check from CMS or Medicaid each year to help smooth the implementation, starting in 2011.

David C. Kibbe MD MBA is a Family Physician and Senior Advisor to the American Academy of Family Physicians who consults on health care professional and consumer technologies. Brian Klepper PhD is a health care market analyst. Their collected collaborative columns may be found here.

Eliza gets a nice write up in BusinessWeek

Indeed, it’s so nice that methinks Lucas & Alex were quite seductive! Speaking as a friend and one who’s been indoctrinated into the cult of Alexandra Drane, its interesting to see the mainstream press picking up the “phone as a tool” theme. The BusinessWeek article shows that a) these calls work to change behavior if targeted correctly and done well and b) that Eliza is humming along very nicely financially. What it doesn’t hint at, but is well worth considering, is the vast potential for these calls to collect data from patients as well, as to relay information to them. As you may guess you’ll see more from Eliza at Health 2.0 this fall, and you can be sure that we’ll be hounding them on that latter point.

The EHR TimeBar: A New Visual Interface Design

The EHR TimeBar functions as a high-level overview of the patient record, as a query device, and as an intuitive navigation tool.  Each EHR file (event) for the patient is represented by an icon. The set of icons and their labels are displayed in column format on the right side of the screen.

EHR TimeBar -- JPEG

The icons are connected to the TimeBar by vertical lines. Because the vertical lines accurately position each event on the TimeBar, the date of each event is usually omitted in order to reduce clutter.Continue reading…

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