Let's Get Healthcare Communicating with Ease
We’ve all been there. Someone in our family (or ourselves) has a medical concern, schedules a primary care visit, and maybe even learns that surgery is needed. What starts as a fairly simple process quickly turns into a near-comedy of inefficiency.
Unleashing The Power of Communications for Healthcare
There has been a lot of talk in Health IT circles about process automation, especially using Artificial Intelligence (AI), to accelerate tasks and bring new efficiencies to hospital operations. These appear to be demonstrating real ROI and are beginning to make a dent in costs. In this post, Dr. Tippett discusses what is driving these advancements.
Interoperability Without a Directory is like Blue Cheese Without Celery!
By Justin Sims
OK, it’s a ridiculous title for a blog. But I think it paints a picture of the central issue of interoperability—because doctors can’t easily and digitally locate their peers, they have no easy means to contact them. True interoperability isn’t just about being able to find a patient record on another system, it’s about communication and collaboration across the care team.
How The Lessons of 2020 Drive Interoperability in 2021
From a Health IT standpoint, 2020 was off to a roaring start with hospitals already underway meeting Promoting Interoperability requirements. Hospital IT leadership was also anticipating the CMS Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule, which had been in the works for well over a year and was set to be finalized in March.
From Information Black Hole to Unified Clinical Collaboration
By Edward Marx
In 1995, I landed my first role in healthcare technology as the director of physician information systems….Our smallish stand-alone hospital was in the fight for its life against the cross-town rival, who just happened to be part of a well-capitalized mega system. The Board agreed to an additional $1M in capital for IT to deploy a strategy to increase the hospital’s ability to enhance physician relationships via technology.
Accelerate Interoperability without Increasing Patient Burden
In a recent article by Kim Huynh and Nazim Dzabic, the authors were spot on to say that changes are needed to empower patients with their health data.
Advisory Note: CMS Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule
Early last week, on what was to be the first day of the HIMSS20 conference in Orlando, CMS published the Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule. careMESH has published an Advisory Note to help guide hospitals about the rule and other details in considering how they will meet the requirements for Patient Event Notifications.
Data is the New Oil: Propelling Patient Data Sharing with State and Federal Regulations
By Tom Dailey
According to a recent Bloomberg article, 16.9% of U.S. GDP now goes toward healthcare spending, nearly double the 8.8% global average as measured by the OECD. For comparison, Americans spend a mere 7.1% of GDP on food. How do we start bringing the U.S. in line with the rest of the world?
Better than Smoke Signals: A Digital Approach to Florida HB 843
By Justin Sims
On June 25th, the State of Florida passed a new healthcare reform bill entitled “Patient Access to Primary Care Providers” or FL HB 843. It focuses on ensuring that a patient's primary care provider (PCP) is notified when the patient is admitted or discharged from the hospital and giving the PCP the opportunity to be consulted in the development of the patient’s care plan.
Closing the Referral Problem in Distributed Care Networks
February 9, 2019 — There have been any number of people and companies working tirelessly to solve healthcare’s interoperability challenges……Why haven’t current efforts yielded greater interoperability? Because in large part, they have relied on pre-planned, point-to-point integration or members-only sharing collaboratives. While each of these can be effective, they inevitably exclude significant portions of a broad network of affiliates, health workers and community healthcare organizations with whom they collaborate (primary care, specialty care, SNF, etc.).
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.