EHR interoperability

See the following -

Halamaka Takes a Deep Dive on the MACRA NPRM

As promised last week, I’ve read and taken detailed notes on the entire 962 page MACRA notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) so that you will not have to. Although this post is long, it is better than the 20 hours of reading I had to do! Here is everything you need to know from an IT perspective about the MACRA NPRM...What is the MACRA NPRM trying to achieve with regard to healthcare IT? The MACRA NPRM proposes to consolidate components of three existing programs, the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), the Physician Value-based Payment Modifier (VM), and the Medicare Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program for eligible professionals (EPs), creating a single set of reporting requirements. The rule would sunset payment adjustments under the current PQRS, VM, and the Medicare EHR Incentive Program for eligible professionals...

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Halamka on Why he Disagrees with the "Snake Oil" Analogy

Earlier this week, the American Medical Association CEO called digital healthcare products modern-day "snake oil." As a provider and a technologist, I think we need a deeper dive to understand the issues, avoiding the kind of hyperbole that’s so common in politics today. Paul B. Batalden, MD, Senior Fellow, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), once said “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets”. Let’s take a brief look at the history of national healthcare IT efforts from 2004-2016 to understand how we’ve achieved exactly the results we designed.

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Health Information Exchanges Report Information Blocking

Kate Monica | EHR Intelligence | March 23, 2017

Despite widespread disapproval and Congressional scrutiny, information blocking remains a problem for health information exchanges working to connect providers and their EHR systems. Drawing data from a national survey of 60 HIE leaders, a new study by researchers at University of Michigan Schools of Information and Public Health found information blocking to be widespread and the policies in place to mitigate the practice ineffective...

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Health Information Exchanges vendors prove tech fitness but only a fraction of initiatives will cross siloes to achieve real interoperability by 2017, reveals Black Book

Press Release | Black Book | February 17, 2015

Health Information Exchanges vendors prove tech fitness but only a fraction of initiatives will cross siloes to achieve real interoperability by 2017, reveals Black Book In 2004, President George W. Bush decreed that within ten years, the US would achieve an environment of shared, private and authorized electronic health records, but as the ten year mark came and passed, Black Book’s latest HIE stakeholder survey discovered such a secure, robust exchange of US patient records is undeniably at least another ten years out. New federal grants aim to resuscitate failing state and regional public HIEs, but a growing number of IT vendors are drastically cutting further interoperability research and development funding. Read More »

Health IT Interoperability Reimagined!

The evolution of fax from paper-based to cloud transmission and storage (CloudFax) is a key step that enables CloudFax providers to comply with HIPAA and other regulations. Further strengthening of CloudFax as a key component in Healthcare Information Systems (HIS) will be its evolution into a Direct Messaging platform that enables the seamless exchange of Patient Health Information (PHI) between the diverse data and document management systems used by labs, pharmacies, doctor's offices, hospitals, and billing providers. CloudFax will support and contribute to the goals of interoperability. Consider:

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Healtheway Announces Appointment of Carequality Leadership

Press Release | Healtheway, Carequality | November 3, 2014

Leadership Committees Include Representation From Providers, Pharmacies, Long-Term and Post-Acute Care, Consumers, Government, Standards Development Organizations and Vendors Read More »

Healthy Skepticism – Jared Sinclair's Critique of HealthKit as Both an iOS Developer and Registered Nurse

Of the many new APIs announced at WWDC this summer, HealthKit has been particularly thought-provoking for me. At the risk of sounding like that guy, I think I have a somewhat priviledged perspective of HealthKit. There can’t be that many former registered nurses who’ve switched to iOS app development and tried to start a healthcare data company.

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HHS Announces the Move Health Data Forward Phase 2 Challenge Winners

Press Release | U.S. Department of Health and Human Services | February 21, 2017

The Department of Health and Humans Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) today announced the Phase 2 winners of the Move Health Data Forward Challenge. Winning submissions will now move on to the challenge’s last phase to develop applications that will allow individuals to share their personal health information safely and securely with their health care providers, family members or other caregivers...

HHS Secretary Equates Health IT to ‘Burden’ for Doctors

Billy Mitchell | FedScoop | April 27, 2017

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price advocated Thursday for reducing the burden placed upon physicians and health care providers by the health technology that is otherwise meant to improve care for patients. Speaking at his first Health Datapalooza as the head of HHS, Price said the proliferation of health IT is something that “can have remarkably challenging and sometimes destructive consequences”...

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HIE At A Crossroads

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | April 28, 2014

In the five years since the HITECH Act brought funding for public health information exchanges, the technology and the organizations that offer it have seen a varied evolution. Today, HIE as a whole is at a crossroads, with much of the public funding running out, but health data exchange services are more important than ever.

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HIMSS16 - HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell Opens Conference

Press Release | HIMSS | February 4, 2015
Visionary healthcare leader – Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell  - will speak at HIMSS16 during the opening keynote session on Monday, Feb. 29, from 5-7 p.m. PST. “We welcome Secretary Burwell to this exciting program we have developed for HIMSS16,” said HIMSS Executive Vice President Carla Smith, MA, FHIMSS, CNM. “As a prominent leader opening our conference, we look forward to hearing her remarks and guidance, as we work to advance health IT systems that bring the right information to the right person at the right time to make the right healthcare decisions.”

How Closed EHR Records Cause Paralysis

Take a step back from the challenges that surround health information technology (HIT) interoperability and you will recognize that market forces and a desperately fragmented health care system make hospitals and vendors act the way we do...The predominant proprietary HIT vendors know about the interoperability gap yet engage in prolonged foot-dragging on even basic data interfacing. Read More »

How Industry Collaboration​ Shaped the Carequality Interoperability Framework

Key to the success of the Carequality Interoperability Framework was the enthusiastic participation of healthcare IT industry leaders and organizations and their collaboration with Carequality. This work was carried out under the guidance and direction of the Sequoia Project staff, with input from the Carequality Query Work Group.  Carequality, a public-private collaborative initiative of The Sequoia Project, creates a standardized, national-level interoperability framework to link all data sharing networks. The Carequality Interoperability Framework is a collection of documents that are used to operationalize data sharing that include...

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How the DOD's choice of EHR will impact providers

Heather Caspi | HelthcareDIVE | February 19, 2015

As the Department of Defense prepares to select a new electronic health record system, some are advocating that it go with an open-source solution—not just to benefit of the DOD but to use the $11-billion program to benefit the healthcare industry at large.

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Humetrix Calls for Burgess Interoperability Bill to Add Provider/Patient EHR Exchange

As a developer of several mobile personal health record applications, Humetrix supports Congressman Michael C. Burgess, MD, aim to accelerate electronic health record interoperability as expressed in his draft Health IT bill. We emphasize the need to facilitate health information exchange between providers and their patients, so that patients or their caregivers connect and exchange their personal health information with different providers as a key complement to efforts to improve health information exchange between provider systems.

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