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.
Team careMESH: Meet Tyler Bowler
Team careMESH Interview
In today’s Team careMESH post, we learn more about Tyler Bowler, a Software Developer who has played an integral role in developing our customers’ experience with careMESH technology over the past 4 years.
Isn't there already a National Provider Directory?
By Justin Sims
Yesterday, careMESH announced the launch our National Provider Directory, completely built on the HL7® FHIR® standard. Are you curious why? Until now, the most common directories were built and used by providers—some are integrated into EHRs, others are maintained on spreadsheets by administrators, and then there are the lists pinned to notice boards that you see in just about every doctor’s office.
Provider Directories: Past, Present and Future
By Justin Sims
Tens of thousands of times each day, clinical staff use search engines like Google to find phone or fax information, call each other to check whether the other party accepts a certain insurance, and fax each other lengthy patient records. It is inefficient, slow, prone to error, and exacerbated by a lack of reliable, centralized information about healthcare providers.
Why Cloud for Health IT. And Why Google Cloud for careMESH.
Several years ago, as I regularly traveled to information security events, the discussion around enterprise use of cloud services to meet mission-critical software requirements was skeptical to say the least.
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.).
Mind the Gap: Creating Seamless Referrals and Transitions in Care
November 14, 2018 — We are all patients and readily migrate between a wide variety of healthcare providers and settings in our lifetime. Many of us (although certainly not all of us) are born in a hospital, regularly visit primary care providers, seek out urgent care when needed, and eventually make our way to surgical and rehabilitation centers and skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) as life progresses. And that is the simple case.
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.