careMESH sat down with Benjamin Fuentes, IT Analyst at Tampa General Hospital, to get his “boots on the ground” perspective of how the hospital’s careMESH integration with Epic has impacted day-to-day operations and eased the delivery of patient information to outside healthcare providers.

By Scott Glasrud

There is an old saying that “it takes a village to raise a child.” I have often thought of this analogy while contemplating the infancy and now adolescence of value-based care. As with any healthcare innovation, value-based care created quite a phenomenon when introduced fifteen years ago. In today’s vernacular, “it went viral.”

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.

By Peter S. Tippett, MD, PhD

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.

By Justin Sims

Just as the COVID-19 pandemic was taking hold, CMS published the Interoperability and Patient Access Rule. This regulation requires hospitals to send admission and discharge information to a patient’s PCP and other post-acute care providers. It is clear this is important to CMS.

By Peter S. Tippett, MD, PhD

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. But empowering patients with data appropriate for them, and leveraging patients to enable interoperability between and among providers are two very different things.

By Catherine Thomas

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.

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?

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.