Bringing "Top Flight" Communications to the Academic Medical Center
The world is full of workflows. At their most basic, workflows are procedures coupled with communication among groups of people. I cut my teeth at age 17 as a licensed pilot and have since learned that the archetype of well-honed workflows is U.S. airline aviation, where there have been zero passenger deaths in more than four years. How does this happen?
2019 EHR Incentives Focus on Referrals & Access to Records
By Justin Sims
August 9, 2018 — Last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published its Final Rule for hospital EHR incentives for 2019. Within this rule, the Promoting Interoperability Programs are all about giving providers and patients better access to digital medical records, especially in support of care transitions. And the data supporting the ongoing challenges with paper are staggering.
CMS is Getting Serious About "Promoting Interoperability"
By Justin Sims
June 21, 2018 — Last month, CMS announced a major overhaul of the “meaningful use” EHR incentive program for hospitals. They intend to replace the incentives, in place since 2011, with “Promoting Interoperability” or PI, beginning in January 2019. This plan demonstrates a renewed commitment to creating a healthcare ecosystem that actually exchanges health records in support of better patient care.
Addressing Inequalities in Urban Healthcare
It’s not news to anyone that urban populations are extremely diverse. Some individuals thrive in our nation’s cities with world-class healthcare, and quality education, abundant food choices, reliable transportation, and other positive social determinants of health. On the other hand, many people struggle in neighborhoods with high incidences of chronic disease, food insecurity, and homelessness. And the truth is, this same pattern repeats itself across the United States.
The Year of Universal Medical Record Sharing
January 19, 2018 — Ask any doctor if they can freely share digital patient records outside of their organization, or access patient information stored in another organization’s EMR, and the answer is typically a resounding “no”. This unfortunate reality perpetuates the use of fax and express or postal mail and contributes to frustration and burnout. In a recent study, 56% of physicians cited too much charting and paperwork as the primary cause. In 2018, this can and must change.
Resistors and Connectors in EMR Interoperability
September 14, 2017 — According to ONC, over 96% of hospitals and 78% of doctors use electronic medical records (EMRs). And while broad adoption of EMRs has been effective for enabling quick access to patient records within facilities and streamlining coding and billing, among other benefits, there are still many challenges sharing patient records and communicating patient information outside of the organization, between providers who are competitive, or geographically dispersed, between those using different EMR vendors, and even in cases when using different instances of the same EMR...
Ensuring Security and Privacy In a Data-Driven Healthcare Setting
May 24, 2017 — Security and privacy have long been THE big worry and a major impediment to widespread adoption of digital medical information sharing. Many of us are well versed in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which was created to address these concerns and to enable portability, and yet so much emphasis has been placed on privacy that the market has been slow to enable the sharing of information....
Health Data Standardization and the Argument for Push
February 14, 2017 — For many years, a majority of healthcare industry leaders and regulators have envisioned a technology architecture in which essentially all medical information about a given person would be stored or accessible in one location. The record, with the proper rights and permissions, would then be available to every appropriate person on the care team....