Venture capitalists increasingly are investing in health IT companies that use data analytics and care management applications to help health care providers rein in medical costs, Kaiser Health News/Washington Post reports.
According to KHN/Washington Post, investment in biotechnology and medical devices has declined sharply since 2007.
At the same time, investment in health IT firms has increased. Research from PricewaterhouseCoopers shows that health care software companies received $407 million in investments during the first three quarters of 2011, compared with the $311 million the sector received during all of 2007.
Investors might be betting that health care organizations squeezed by the recent recession are interested in IT systems that help them identify possible savings.
In addition, some investors might believe that the federal health reform law is increasing demand for companies that use data to:
Bob Kocher — a former health policy adviser for the Obama administration who now works for venture capital firm Venrock — said, “The changes in the health system are rocket fuel for entrepreneurs” (Weaver, Kaiser Health News/Washington Post, 11/6).
Source: iHealthBeat
Most U.S. physicians believe electronic health records are safer than paper-based medical records, while patients are split over which system is safer, according to a survey conducted by GfK Roper on behalf of EHR provider Practice Fusion, Becker’s Hospital Review reports (Rodak, Becker’s Hospital Review, 11/3).
For the physician portion of the survey, 1,220 medical professionals answered an online questionnaire on Oct. 28. For the patient portion of the survey, researchers conducted phone interviews with 1,006 U.S. adults between Oct. 21 and Oct. 23 (Miliard, Healthcare IT News, 11/2).
Key Findings
The survey found that:
Source: iHealthBeat
About 46% of physicians frequently use search engines like Google and Yahoo to look up information on diagnoses and treatments, according to a survey commissioned by Wolters Kluwer Health, the Wall Street Journal‘s “Health Blog” reports.
For the report, research firm Ipsos surveyed more than 300 physicians who belong to the American Medical Association.
Sources for Medical Information
Researchers asked physicians about how they obtained information for diagnosis and treatment and found that:
Health IT Adoption
The survey also found that 44% of respondents said they have a long way to go toward embracing health IT and clinical decision support tools.
Researchers asked physicians about the barriers to adopting health IT systems and found that:
Source: iHealthBeat
Larger medical practices are more likely than smaller practices to have implemented electronic health record systems, according to a survey by health care research firm SK&A, NextGov‘s “Health IT Update” reports (Pulley, “Health IT Update,” NextGov, 10/25).
The report is based on an ongoing telephone survey of 237,562 U.S. medical practices (SK&A release, 10/24).
Practice Size-Related Findings
Researchers noted that 40.4% of the medical practices surveyed had adopted EHRs. They also found that:
Additional Findings
The report also found that:
Researchers found that medical practices specializing in dialysis and pathology had the highest EHR adoption rates at 65% and 62%, respectively.
Medical practices specializing in psychiatry and holistic medicine had the lowest EHR adoption rates at 17% (“Health IT Update,” NextGov, 10/25).
Source: iHealthBeat
Physicians who received at least three to five days of training reported the highest levels of satisfaction with their electronic health record system, according to a survey by AmericanEHR Partners, Modern Healthcare reports (Robeznieks, Modern Healthcare, 10/21).
However, the survey found that 49.3% of surveyed physicians said they received three or fewer days of EHR training (Cadet, CMIO, 10/24).
AmericanEHR Partners is an online community created by the American College of Physicians and Cientis Technologies.
The report — titled, “Correlation of Training Duration With EHR Usability and Satisfaction: Implications for Meaningful Use” — is based on an online survey of 2,338 physicians from five different medical societies between April 2010 and July 2011.
Under the 2009 federal economic stimulus package, health care providers who demonstrate meaningful use of certified EHR systems can qualify for Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments.
Additional Findings
According to the survey, larger physician practices tended to offer fewer days of EHR training. The survey also found that physicians:
Source: iHealthBeat
About 26% of U.S. adults used their mobile phones to access health information in 2011, up from 12% who reported doing so in 2010, according to a recent Manhattan Research report, MobiHealthNews reports.
The Cybercitizen Health report is based on a Q3 2011 phone and online survey of 8,745 U.S. adults.
According to the report, looking up health information and reading health-related news continues to be the most popular health-related use of mobile phones (Gullo, MobiHealthNews, 10/19).
However, the report did find an increase in consumers’ use of mobile phones to manage their care or treatment. For example, about 8% of adults used mobile phone prescription drug refill or reminder services in 2011, up from 3% in 2010 (Manhattan Research release, 10/19).
Source: iHealthBeat
Most physicians use text messaging to exchange patient information with other health care providers, but such communication could be a violation of federal privacy and security rules, experts said during a webinar Monday, BNA reports.
The webinar was hosted by TigerText, a provider of secure text messaging capabilities to health care organizations and other industries.
Brad Brooks, president and co-founder of TigerText, said that more than 70% of physicians use text messaging to communicate with other health care providers about patients.
Brooks said that text messaging allows health care providers to send and receive real-time information without relying on phone or email. He added that text messaging offers a “huge opportunity” to improve the cost and quality of health care.
However, Brooks warned that health care providers’ use of text messaging could violate HIPAA privacy and security rules if the messages contain protected health information and do not include adequate safeguards.
Adam Greene — an attorney with Davis Wright Tremaine and a former employee at HHS’ Office for Civil Rights, which enforces HIPAA rules — said that HIPAA regulations apply to all electronic protected health information and that data included in text messages could be covered under the broad definition of protected health information.
For example, a text message between two physicians could be considered protected health information if it includes admission or discharge data that could lead to the identification of the patient.
Greene urged health care organizations to include health care providers’ text messaging capabilities and content in their HIPAA risk analyses to identify any potential vulnerabilities (Casey Plank, BNA, 10/19).
Source: iHealthBeat
CMS has released additional guidance for hospitals on the process of attesting to the meaningful use of electronic health records, Health Data Management reports.
Under the 2009 federal economic stimulus package, health care providers who demonstrate meaningful use of certified EHR systems can qualify for Medicaid and Medicare incentive payments (Goedert, Health Data Management, 10/19).
Details of the Guidance
CMS said hospitals aiming to meet Medicare meaningful use requirements are “attesting to providing all of the information necessary … to render complete and accurate information for all meaningful use core and menu set measures except [clinical quality measures].”
The agency noted that it considers data to be accurate and complete for clinical quality measures when they are “identical to the output that was generated from certified EHR technology” (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 10/19).
This explanation means that a hospital does not need to submit additional clinical quality data beyond what an EHR system produces, even if the values reported include zeros.
CMS’ guidance also states that:
Source: iHealthBeat
The nation’s limited implementation of health IT systems has hindered quality improvement efforts, according to a new report from the Commonwealth Fund, Modern Healthcare reports.
However, the authors said that programs aimed at boosting health IT adoption under the federal health reform law have the potential to improve health care quality and efficiency (McKinney, Modern Healthcare, 10/18).
Report Details
The report, conducted by the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System, evaluated the U.S. health care system on 42 indicators of quality, access, efficiency, equity and healthy lives.
The scorecard compared average U.S. performance rates to those achieved by the top 10% of U.S. states, regions, health plans and health care providers, as well as top-performing countries (Byers, CMIO, 10/18).
Key Findings
The U.S. health care system scored 64 out of 100 on key measures of performance and 53 out of 100 on measures of efficiency, indicating a relatively low use of electronic health records and high administrative costs, according to the report.
Despite some areas of improvement, including public reporting of quality data on federal websites, quality of care still varies widely across the U.S. and has failed to keep pace with other countries (Commonwealth Fund release, 10/18).
The report noted that in seven other industrialized countries, 94% or more of physician practices have implemented EHR systems.
The authors wrote that health care providers in other countries are more likely than those in the U.S. to have “advanced functions to provide decision support and enable information to flow with patients across sites of care” (Modern Healthcare, 10/18).
Potential for Improvement Under Health Reform Law
The authors noted that data from the report were collected before the federal health reform law was enacted (CMIO, 10/18).
David Blumenthal — chair of the commission and former National Coordinator for Health IT — said that the reform law and “investments in information systems offer the potential for rapid progress in areas like adoption and use of [health IT], safer care and premature deaths from preventable complications” (Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 10/18).
For example, the report noted that greater health IT use could lower rates of certain adverse events, such as medication errors, and help health care providers improve care coordination and measure performance (Modern Healthcare, 10/18).
Source: iHealthBeat
About 56 million U.S. adults have accessed their medical information through a physician-maintained electronic health record system, and 41 million more are interested in doing so, according to a study by Manhattan Research, Becker’s Hospital Review reports (Rodak, Becker’s Hospital Review, 10/13).
However, the study also found that 140 million U.S. adults are not interested in accessing their health data via physician-maintained EHRs.
According to the study, those who were not interested in accessing their electronic health data tended to be less educated, older and less likely to use the Internet or Web-based mobile devices (Pulley, NextGov, 10/13).
The findings come from Manhattan Research’s Cybercitizen Health U.S. 2011 study of digital health trends. The study is based on an online and phone survey of 8,745 adults that was conducted during the third quarter of 2011 (Healthcare Informatics, 10/12).
Source: iHealthBeat
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