Several companies are offering remote monitoring tools aimed at helping older adults live independently longer, NPR’s “Morning Edition” reports.
“Telecaregivers” use technology to monitor the actions of aging residents. The technology telecaregivers use includes:
Services from one telecaregiver service, ResCare, can cost from $600 per month to more than $1,000 per month. These costs are far below the cost of nursing homes, according to “Morning Edition.”
ResCare’s telecaregivers can:
Nel Taylor, a ResCare official, said the company generally helps people at the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.
Other companies employ motion sensors that can detect if someone being monitored has been in one area of the home for too long, and notify relatives.
Other services provide:
Source: iHealthBeat
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, along with other economic forces, will significantly change the way hospitals and physicians work with one another. To help measure that change, Modern Healthcare, in partnership with Press Ganey of South Bend, Ind., is conducting an industrywide survey on hospital-physician relations. The 2010 Hospital-Physician Relations Survey will examine the state of relations between hospitals and their employed physicians and how those relations may change.
The survey is now open and is available to all readers of Modern Healthcare and sister publication Modern Physician. Readers can find the survey at modernhealthcare.com/surveys. The participation deadline is Sept. 20.
Modern Healthcare and Press Ganey will analyze the results and report the findings in the Nov. 8 issue of Modern Healthcare and Modern Physician.
A study by Frost & Sullivan predicts that revenue for the U.S. ambulatory electronic health record (EHR) market will double from $1.3 billion in 2009 to an estimated $2.6 billion in 2012. Further, by 2013, the market will reach its peak, posting revenue of $3 billion. However, by 2016 market saturation will have occurred and revenue is expected to fall to $1.4 billion.
Published this month, the U.S. Ambulatory EHR Market report said that, while the federal funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive programs are contributing to the acceleration of EHR adoption, there are other factors such as the need to improve safety and the drive to build greater efficiency into physician workflows that are important drivers in the adoption of EHRs.
“I think the number one driver [of ambulatory EHR adoption] is the change in reimbursement, the fact that it is becoming so complicated to document the process of care to get paid by the government as well as commercial payers,” said Nancy Fabozzi, a senior industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan and the report’s author. “Everybody thinks that fee-for-service is doomed and we have to have a new system of reimbursing physicians for the quality of care instead of the quantity of care because costs are exploding.”In an interview with InformationWeek, Fabozzi said another reason for the adoption of ambulatory EHRs is that many providers have practice management systems that are old and need to be updated as they move to ICD-10 and HIPAA 5010 requirements.
She also said that there has been an ongoing upward trajectory in the adoption of EHRs for the past decade, albeit slow prior to the injection of federal funds to jumpstart EHR adoption.”It’s been slow but it has been a continual upward trajectory. That train was moving anyway, but it’s now moving a little bit faster because of the policies of the Obama administration. If you’re pumping $40 billion into a marketplace it’s going to have some impact,” Fabozzi added.Over the past year, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act has significantly increased public awareness around the issue of EHRs. In addition to direct payments to physicians and hospitals for the meaningful use of EHRs, HITECH will indirectly stimulate the market by enticing additional stakeholders like commercial payers, professional medical societies, healthcare manufacturers, and various nonprofit organizations to help physicians and other providers successfully adopt IT in their practices.
Source: HITS
HHS has announced the launch of the Insurance Finder widget for websites, designed to help consumers find the most affordable health insurance options personalized by state of residence and other characteristics, Government Health IT reports (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 8/25).
The widget appears on a website as a graphic.
Codes to embed the widget in website are available at HealthCare.gov, the website that was created to publicize the federal health reform law (Lipowicz, Federal Computer Week, 8/25).
When users click on the widget, the search program first prompts them to select responses to two questions about the state they wish to find coverage in and information that best describes them. The tool then redirects them to HealthCare.gov to continue the process based on answers to specific questions (Government Health IT, 8/25).
A recent test of the widget found that pricing information for more than a dozen health insurance plans available in a selected state was listed as unavailable until October 2010 (Federal Computer Week, 8/25).
Source: iHealthBeat
In its comments on the proposed 2011 physician fee schedule, the Medical Group Management Association strongly urged the CMS to revise the penalties slated for its e-prescribing incentives program.
The CMS had implemented the “eRX” program in 2009, offering a 1% bonus payment starting in 2011 for physicians or group practices that would qualify as “successful electronic prescribers” as defined in the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008. In 2012, however, the program is set to impose penalties on providers who are not successful e-prescribers.
The MGMA agreed with the CMS that low-volume prescribers should not be penalized but suggested in its comments letter that the agency “exercise additional flexibility in assigning penalties.” As an example, the letter’s authors stated, a high-volume prescriber may be located in a geographic area where nearby pharmacies don’t have electronic prescribing capabilities.
The CMS also states that the receipt of an incentive payment under Medicare’s electronic health records incentive program will not preclude providers from being subject to the penalty under the separately administered eRX program. To avoid the penalty, a physician or group practice “still must meet the relevant eRX penalty criteria for being a successful electronic prescriber.”
MGMA contends that providers meeting “meaningful user of electronic health records” criteria should not be assigned any penalties under the eRX program.
Source: HITS
Whether or not you’ve made the transition to electronic medical records (EMR), you should consider going digital with your other paper records. Electronic record-keeping not only frees up office space for other uses, but also adds layers of security to your files, makes them more easily accessible to you and your staff, and reduces the risk of filing errors.
Digitizing saves time and helps your practice run more efficiently because you can easily locate information rather than rummaging through paper files, some of which could be incomplete or illegible.
What’s more, going digital can save you money. You’re no longer paying for shredding, disposal or file storage, and you can use former file room space for revenue-generating services. You may even be able to lease a smaller office since you won’t need file space, which could dramatically decrease your rent.
And of course, digitizing helps you go “green” as it dramatically reduces paper usage in your office.
Source: MedicalOfficeToday
Early into his second term, President George W. Bush called for the nationwide adoption of universal EMRs by 2015. Most healthcare organizations seem to be on board with this mission and agree that widespread use of EMRs will reduce storage and recordkeeping costs, protect patient confidentiality, and improve research and patient care. While the potential benefits are evident, most healthcare practitioners are slow to implement EMR practices and platforms.
The aversions to EMR adoption are well documented. First off, there’s the cost. Transitioning to an EMR not only involves an investment in new technology components, but also a cost associated with the implementation resources (e.g. technical consultants) to ensure a successful rollout. Second, and more importantly, is the change in workflow that is required on the part of the healthcare facility and the physicians. Shifting from a manual paper to an automated electronic platform is a complex process that takes time. Many healthcare organizations feel that the time it takes to implement the technology, redefine the workflow processes, and get the entire staff up to speed on the new system has the potential to negatively affect patient care in the near term. Healthcare facilities that have put their EMR initiatives on hold due to these or other aversions may find hope in many of today’s EDM (electronic document management) and ECM (enterprise content management) systems.
More and more, ECM offerings are being used by healthcare organizations as a bridge technology to EMR implementations. Though an organization may be a couple years from implementing an EMR, or may be in the early stages of a multiyear EMR rollout, it is possible to begin the digitization of medical records much earlier and make those digitized records available to providers in a patient care setting by installing an ECM system first.
Source: Healthcare Technology Online
After proposed medical privacy regulations were criticized by several lawmakers for not going far enough, HHS will rewrite the regulations and aim to release a final proposal by this fall, the New York Times reports.
The White House urged HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to rewrite the regulations, which HHS developed based on privacy safeguards that had been outlined in the 2009 economic stimulus package.
Concerns With Proposal
HHS originally submitted its medical privacy regulations proposal to the White House in May for approval. However, a group of lawmakers in a letter to Sebelius criticized the proposed rules because they did not require health care providers and health insurance companies to notify patients and customers of a privacy breach unless the breach posed “a significant risk of financial, reputational or other harm to the individual.”
The rule specifically stipulated that no notification was necessary if the hospital or insurer concluded that the patient would not be harmed.
Addressing ‘Harm Threshold’
HHS said that some kind of “harm threshold” was necessary to ensure that consumers would not be inundated with breach notices and warnings about privacy violations that were not significant or harmful.
The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse — a patient privacy rights advocacy group — has estimated that the private medical information of more than five million individuals has been improperly used or accessed in the past 18 months.
The incidence of such breaches appears to have become more common as health care providers and consumers increasingly adopt health IT, social media and other Internet-based tools (Pear, New York Times, 8/22).
Source: iHealthBeat
Two pharmacies — one in Illinois and one in Utah — have been identified by federal agents as part of a national online ring of pharmacies that are allegedly delivering medications without asking customers to present valid prescriptions, according to search affidavits filed in the state courts, CNN reports.
The affidavits, which were obtained by CNN, showed that the two pharmacies — in Des Plaines, Ill. and American Fork, Utah — are owned by the same person and often marketed drugs that were highly addictive, such as muscle relaxants.
During the first six months of 2010, the Illinois pharmacy collaborated with another unidentified pharmacy to ship 30,000 packages of prescription medications nationwide, according to the affidavits.
Implications
John Horton — a former official in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and current president of the online pharmacy watchdog group LegitScript — said that the affidavits are an indication that the Department of Justice is in the process of launching a new effort against illicit online pharmacies.
Between 2008 and April 2010, federal agents ordered prescription medications from a number of websites and received the drugs within two days.
Horton said, “These affidavits indicate this was a multiyear, multimillion-dollar operation involving thousands and thousands of prescriptions.”
Horton also said that it is likely that illegally obtaining prescription drugs online involves large cash transactions. He estimated that illicit online pharmacies could process $500,000 worth of transactions per month.
The U.S. attorney’s offices in Utah and Chicago have declined to comment on the matter (Griffin/Fitzpatrick, CNN, 8/20).
Source: iHealthBeat
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger officially launched the California Telehealth Network on Tuesday at the UC Davis Cancer Center in Sacramento.
In a news briefing, Schwarzenegger lumped the telecommunications network’s development in with construction of bridges, highways and other concrete-and-steel projects included in his administration’s $60 billion infrastructure development program, but he also pointed to the special role information technology plays in saving lives and improving public health.
“Here, we’re talking about the digital highway, broadband, that is also part of the infrastructure,” Schwarzenegger told briefing attendees, including U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and state and local health IT officials. “A lot of people are not aware of that, but there are a thousand people a year dying in California of just someone misreading a prescription or not having the total medical records and so on, so this is inexcusable.” With the launch of the California Telehealth Network, he said, “We are changing that, and reducing errors, and saving money at the same time.”
The California Telehealth Network will give patients at healthcare clinics in rural and medically underserved areas across the state telecommunications access to specialists at state teaching hospitals. “I think telemedicine is going to be the future of medicine,” Schwarzenegger said, adding that telehealth is a facet of healthcare reform in that it helps provide good-quality, affordable care for everyone.
Maria Alino, a pediatrician in solo practice in Oroville, Calif., has been using telemedicine in her practice for 10 years as part of a precursor pilot to the California Telehealth Network with UC Davis. She appeared on a projection screen at the briefing, beamed there from 108-bed Oroville Hospital, located in an agricultural community about 70 miles north of Sacramento.
Alino said in a telephone interview after the conference that she uses the telehealth system at least twice a week, on average, primarily in scheduled consults with pediatric specialists in endocrinology, psychiatry, neurology and weight management, but also on occasion in emergencies. Once, she said, she helped save the life of newborn who had a defective heart by contacting a pediatric cardiologist via the telehealth system.
“The baby came out blue,” Alino recalled, but Oroville Hospital was able to transmit via the network an echocardiogram and link to the UC Davis specialist on video in real time.
The specialist’s “face was in the television,” Alino said. “She was saying do this, do that; it was so nice.”
Alino said Oroville was “lucky to be the first one” on the pilot network, and now, “I hope that other physicians will have the benefits that I did.”
California Telehealth Network Executive Director Eric Brown said plans call for activating the first 50 sites on the network in the next few months. The goal is to have about 800 sites connected within three years.
The $30 million network was funded by a $22.1 million grant from the Federal Communications Commission, $3.6 million from the California Emerging Technology Fund and $2 million from the California HealthCare Foundation as well as grants and pledges of support from the California Emerging Technology Fund, the California Public Utilities Commission, the National Coalition for Health Integration and UnitedHealthcare. The University of California Office of the President and the UC Davis Health System are the entities legally and financially responsible for the project.
Source: ModernHealthcare.com
MGMA Supports ICD-10 Testing With Outside Organizations
July 30, 2013
Report: Many EHR Users Set To Replace Systems Within the Next Year
July 30, 2013
Providers, Vendors Urge Congress To Delay Meaningful Use Stage 2
July 30, 2013
Many Doctors May Find Meeting ‘Meaningful Use’ Requirements a Challenge
June 28, 2013
When it Comes to ICD-10 Physician Documentation: Collaborate and Educate
June 28, 2013
The Slow Crawl Toward Improved EHR Usability and Interoperability
June 28, 2013
Efficient Patient Communication and Engagement
June 13, 2013
ONC Issues Guidance on Stage 2 Transition of Care Requirements
May 31, 2013
Drugmakers Leverage Doctor, Patient Data To Market Their Products
May 31, 2013
Consumer Organizations Defend Meaningful Use Program
May 31, 2013
