The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT will delay the launch of the permanent program for certification of electronic health records until mid-2012 to coincide with the anticipated final rule for stage 2 of meaningful use and standards and certification criteria. ONC also said it needed more time to assemble and approve testing labs and authorized certifying bodies, ONC said in a Nov. 2 announcement by Dr. Farzad Mostashari, the national health IT coordinator, in a preview area of the Federal Register. ONC will officially publish the notice Nov. 3. Previously, ONC intended to sunset its temporary program at the end of the year and open the permanent and more comprehensive program on or around Jan. 1.
The number of hospitals ready to meet Stage 1 of meaningful use jumped 16% from February to September, according to a HIMSS Analytics Report, “Summary of Meaningful Use Readiness.” In those seven months, U.S. hospitals went from 25% to 41% being well positioned. The report also indicated that more eligible hospitals are likely to succeed in meeting the criteria for this first stage. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services also have shown continued growth in the number of eligible hospitals moving toward or meeting Stage 1. As of Sept. 30, the CMS reported 2,215 eligible hospitals have registered for Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive programs; 564 hospitals (158/Medicare and 406/Medicaid) have received payment for meeting Stage 1 of meaningful use, as of this same date.
As U.S. healthcare providers install and build out electronic health records systems, nurses are demanding leadership roles in IT projects. And hospitals across the country appear to be responding by creating the position of chief nursing information officer. According to a survey from executive search firm Witt-Kieffer, 70% of multi-hospital systems and 82% of hospitals that are part of multi-hospital systems surveyed said they had a CNIO or equivalent. A majority of freestanding hospitals, integrated delivery networks, and academic medical centers also have hired a lead nursing informaticist. Seventeen percent said they planned to bring in a CNIO in the next year or two.
Federal health officials have approved a first-of-a-kind artificial heart valve that can be implanted without major surgery, offering a new treatment option for patients who are too old or frail for the chest-opening procedure currently used. The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it approved Edwards Lifesciences' Sapien heart valve, which can be threaded into place through a major artery that runs from the leg to the heart. Cardiologists say the new approach will help old, sickly patients who cannot undergo open heart surgery, which has been used to replace valves for decades.
The National Institute of Standards (NIST), in conjunction with public and private sector stakeholders, has called on the healthcare community to help evaluate electronic health records (EHRs), examine the human factors that are crucial to their design, and assist with guidance on the development of usability engineering practices. An October 27 webcast focused on NIST's recently released Technical Evaluation, Testing, and Validation of the Usability of Electronic Health Records, draft guidelines that review the rationale for an EHR usability protocol (EUP). The guidelines outline procedures for expert evaluation of an EHR user interface from clinical and human factors best-practices perspectives.
Though hospitals are eligible for billions of dollars in federal stimulus money to bring their facilities into the digital age to save money and improve the quality of health care, just one in 10 is ready to meet government standards to qualify for the funds, a new analysis shows. A study by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), based in Chicago, shows just 10 percent of the nation's hospitals are "now ready" to address all 14 core measures the government is requiring before they can get extra payments from the federal Medicare health insurance program for the elderly or Medicaid health insurance for the poor.