Electronic Medical Records

Since our article ran in the July issue of Health Management Technology on the impact of delays in defining meaningful use (MU), the long-awaited update to January’s interim MU release was finally issued on July 13. MSP is already analyzing the changes and updating its MSP EHR Selector to reflect them. The EHR Selector is a Web-based tool that uses 689 criteria to characterize all EHR products from developers who submit them and are willing to have them independently vetted. Once this update has been completed, MSP will invite (via e-mail) all currently subscribed EHR developers to update their product profile to indicate compliance with the final MU standards. The EHR Selector includes an MU profile that allows all MU criteria to be asserted with one mouse click.

What practice owners should consider when looking at electronic health records systems.

Passage of the HITECH Act provides medical practices a windfall of incentives (ranging up to $44,000) to adopt and use a certified electronic health record (EHR) system in a meaningful way. Because of this, there has been a renewed effort from solution providers to promote solutions as a one-stop shop for all the needs of the practices. At the same time, practices are trying to implement a solution and reap the benefits ASAP. However, before the practices start scouting and evaluating products, it is important to understand that the implementation of an EHR product is a complex activity requiring dedicated effort and due diligence. The numbers of implementations that fail in the first year of their implementation provide testimony to this.

U.S. physicians who are eligible providers (EPs) will adopt electronic health records (EHR) in the next three to four years or face federal patient reimbursement penalties. To assist EPs, regional extension centers (RECs) were funded to move practices from paper-based to EHR-based documentation; but there are other ways to accomplish the same result, including independent EHR consultants and “do-it-yourself” approaches. This article contrasts these approaches and looks at how the change in the federal approach has affected EHR adoption processes overall.

Because of the emphasis by the Obama Administration on converting 100,000 primary-care physicians using paper-based medical records to become users of electronic medical records (EMRs) that achieve meaningful use (MU), there is strong interest in how well the EMR market is doing.

Driven by CCHIT certification, meaningful use and ARRA/HITECH incentive programs, the purchase of electronic health records/electronic medical records systems is looming large on many hospitals’ horizons – most likely for this fiscal year.

According to a report recently released by the American College of Physicians, “Increasing the use of quality measurement as part of EHR systems is critical to achieving meaningful use of health information technology.”

Clinicians are able to insert their thoughts and assessments into the documentation, allowing subsequent caregivers to understand and coordinate care more effectively.

If one reads clinician-authored critiques of the current state of electronic health records (EHRs), a recurring theme emerges: the poor quality of clinical notes in EHRs. The authors may cite excessive use of “cut and paste” to replicate past documentation (often without appropriate changes), excessive citation of results that needlessly expand a note’s length, and the absence of any clear articulation of the clinician’s thoughts, judgments and priorities.

Today, barely more than a quarter of physicians use electronic medical records (EMR) in an ambulatory setting, and roughly only 10 percent of hospitals have the technology to allow physicians to enter orders directly into a computer for transmission to the laboratory, pharmacy or other units. The consolidation inherent in a move to EMR has a number of implications, including the increased importance of IT infrastructure recovery capabilities.

 

LibertyHealth upgraded its wireless network to assure users had the 24-hour access needed by healthcare applications.

Patients’ vital signs are not the only information LibertyHealth needs to monitor at its hospitals, health centers and other facilities in the Jersey City, N.J., region. From high-tech infant care and adult surgery to in-hospital rehabilitation and home-care services, the system’s medical personnel depend on a wide range of networked applications. These, in turn, depend on a reliable wireless network.