HIPAA Omnibus Rule

See the following -

Advice To The Next National Coordinator

John Halamka | Life As A Healthcare CIO | October 8, 2013

Over the next few months, Jacob Reider will serve as the interim National Coordinator for Healthcare IT while the search continues for Farzad Mostashari's permanent replacement. Read More »

CIOs Might Be Ready On Time For ICD-10 Deadline Next Year, But Will The Government?

Carl Natale | Government Health IT | November 27, 2013

John D. Halamka, chief information officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and co-chair of the HIT Standards Committee doesn't think enough healthcare organizations will be ready for ICD-10 implementation on Oct. 1. Read More »

Creating Beth Israel's FY16 Information Systems Strategic Plan

I recently wrote about the process of setting FY16 Clinical Information System Priorities for the next year. That project is proceeding well and in parallel I’ve created my own contribution. I do not want to influence the stakeholder consensus at all, but members of the IS Governance committee asked for my opinion. Here’s my thinking...Each year, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) Information Systems works with business owners to support BIDMC annual goals with information technology tactics. This ensures that the mission of BIDMC is supported by suitable operational tools. From 2012-2015, all hospitals in the US were compelled to focus their attention on Meaningful Use, ICD-10, the HIPAA Omnibus Rule, and the Affordable Care Act. Since those projects are nearly completed, it is important for BIDMC stakeholders to enumerate the new technology priorities which will best support their activities in the coming year. Read More »

Fine Tuning The National Healthcare IT Timeline

John Halamka | Life As A Healthcare CIO | November 20, 2013

As I work with healthcare leaders in Boston, in New England, and throughout the country, I'm seeing signs that well resourced medical centers will struggle with Meaningful Use stage 2 attestation, ICD-10 go live, HIPAA Omnibus Rule readiness, and Accountable Care Act implementation, all of which have 2013-2014 deadlines... Read More »

Halamka Does FY16 Strategic Planning

As we gather together stakeholders for strategic planning of next year’s priorities, what are we hearing and what we have learned? 1. Clinicians are overwhelmed by the current demands of Meaningful Use, hundreds of quality measures, population health, care management, and patient/family engagement. All of these are good ideas individually but the sum of their requirements overwhelms providers. In an era when we’re trying to control costs, adding more clinical FTEs to spread the work over a large team is not possible. The end result is that providers spend hours each night catching up on the day’s documentation and are demanding better tools/automation to reduce their strain.

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Halamka: 2015 In Review

It’s now December and as each year ends, I always look back on the challenges and achievements of the past 12 months. Here’s my sense of 2015. ICD10 - billions were spent, countless other projects were delayed, and the transition occurred on October 1 without a major incident...Did we get our money’s worth? I have argued and will continue to assert that ICD-10 benefited no one. The diagnoses used are more variable so there is less precision in their use. Clinical documentation (in general in the industry) does not have the specificity needed to justify the more granular ICD-10 codes. The notion that quality measures can now be computed more accurately from ICD-10 coded administrative data is just not true...

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Halamka: Stage 2 Meaningful Use, ICD-10 Timelines Unrealistic

Jennifer Bresnick | EHR Intelligence | November 20, 2013

The current slew of health IT initiatives slated to hit the healthcare industry over the next year or so place unrealistic expectations on beleaguered providers [...]. Between Stage 2 of meaningful use, ICD-10 implementation, the HIPAA Omnibus rule, and the Affordable Care Act, providers simply have too much to handle in too short a timeframe to make everything work the way rule makers hope it will. [...] Read More »

Halamka: What Keeps Me Up At Night - Fall 2013

John Halamka | Life As A Healthcare CIO | September 3, 2013

All of these challenges can be conquered. For nearly 20 years, I've led an IT organization that has continuously delivered miracles with 1.9% of the operating budget.  I am ready for the challenges ahead but wonder if mergers/acquisitions, regulatory uncertainty, MU2 certification challenges, resource constraints, and real time demands will create a set of constraints that are impossible to optimize.
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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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John Halamka Looks Back at 2014

2014 was quite a year. Thinking back to December 2013, I cannot believe that so much has happened. Let’s take a look at the major HIT events that shaped 2014 and what they portend for 2015 Read More »

The Experience of Interoperability Thus Far

As I travel across the country and listen to CIOs struggling with mandates from Meaningful Use to ICD-10 to the HIPAA Omnibus rule to the Affordable Care Act, I'm always looking for ways to reduce the burden on IT leaders. All have expressed frustration with the health information exchange (HIE) policies and technologies for care coordination. quality measurement, and patient engagement. As a country, what can we do to reduce this anxiety? Read More »

What’s In Store For Health IT In 2014?

Brian Ahier | HL7 Standards | January 23, 2014

2013 was a good year for health IT and has laid the foundation for 2014 to be the biggest year ever for the industry. Read More »