Preliminary results of a pilot project testing standardized reporting of public health information from electronic health records (EHRs) reveals that by using templates for clinical data, public health officials can improve the quality and coordination of care as they try to contain problems such as West Nile Virus, or outbreaks of whooping cough or flu. The pilot project is part of a three-year program in which IBM, the CDC, and the Public Health Data Standards Consortium (PHDSC) are collaborating on ways to make patient health data in EHRs quicker and easier for health officials to access.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released on Thursday the final requirements for stage 2 meaningful use, which aims to promote the implementation of electronic medical records among healthcare providers.
Make clear that stage two of the program will begin as early as 2014. No providers will be required to follow the Stage 2 requirements outlined today before 2014.
Outline the certification criteria for the certification of EHR technology, so eligible professionals and hospitals may be assured that the systems they use will work, help them meaningfully use health information technology, and qualify for incentive payments.
Modify the certification program to cut red tape and make the certification process more efficient.
Allow current “2011 Edition Certified EHR Technology” to be used until 2014.
Officials at the West Virginia Health Information Network (WVHIN) announced on Wednesday the launch of two new pilots for its statewide health information exchange (HIE) system. Wheeling Hospitals and West Virginia University Healthcare are the first to go live with this new part of the statewide WVHIN HIE, a public/private partnership created in 2006 aiming to create a secure electronic health information system for the exchange of patient data among physicians, hospitals, diagnostic laboratories, other care providers and stakeholders. Working with early adopters across Medicaid, public health, and provider networks, Wheeling Hospitals and West Virginia University Healthcare (WVUH) were selected to be the first pilot sites.
Healthcare providers are being pushed to deliver more cost effective medical care and to improve the health of not just individual patients but large populations. One key to carrying out both mandates is finding more clinically effective treatment options. Enter comparative effectiveness research. CER compares two or more accepted treatments to determine which are most effective. Medical informatics comes into the picture because it's now possible to get these projects off the ground by analyzing huge patient databases. And much of that patient data can now be gleaned from electronic health record systems.
Hawaii enacted a new law that harmonizes its state medical privacy laws with HIPAA, the federal medical privacy law. Hawaii's legislators and governor, along with an impressive array of patient groups, healthcare providers, insurance companies, and health information technologists, agreed that having dozens of unique Hawaii medical privacy laws in addition to HIPAA was confusing, expensive, and bad for patients. HB 1957 thus eliminates the need for entities covered by HIPAA to also comply with Hawaii's complex array of medical privacy laws.
The fraud squads that look for scams in the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs have some new weapons: tools and funding provided by the Affordable Care Act. The federal health law and other legislation directed the federal government to start using sophisticated anti-fraud computer systems. Peter Budetti, who oversees anti-fraud efforts at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the systems, which are being used first with Medicare, are similar to those used by credit card companies to detect suspicious purchases. The computer program crawls around the heaps of Medicare claims—some 4 million a day—to look for outliers. And for the first time, doctors and others who want to bill Medicare are being assessed based on their risk to commit fraud. Those who seem crooked are kept out.