Business sustainability continues to be among the biggest challenges for most health information exchanges, even as new HIEs are starting up and existing ones are figuring out ways to overcome technical and other various hurdles, according to a new report from eHealth Initiative. The number of HIEs in the U.S. grew 9% in 2011 to 255 from 234 in 2010, according to a recently released annual report by eHealth Initiative, an independent non-profit membership organization that advocates for the use of health IT and studies HIE trends. The number of HIEs tallied by eHI reflects 10 initiatives shutting down or consolidating over the last year, and 46 new initiatives participating in the eHI survey. eHI has been conducting its Report On Health Information Exchanges studies since 2004, when there were only a few dozen HIE initiatives. That was prior to the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's $27 billion HITECH Act, which included more than $564 million in funding to help states launch or expand HIEs.
Twitter, Facebook, and online communities can help healthcare organizations, emergency personnel, and government agencies better prepare for and respond to emergencies, so it's a good idea to integrate these technologies into planning, according to three public-health professionals. "Clearly, social media are changing the way people communicate not only in their day-to-day lives, but also during disasters that threaten public health. Engaging with and using emerging social media may well place the emergency-management community, including medical and public health professionals, in a better position to respond to disasters," Raina M. Merchant, MD, Stacy Elmer, and Nicole Lurie, MD, of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response wrote in a New England Journal of Medicine commentary.
The federal incentive program for Meaningful Use of electronic health records seems to be having its desired early effect by spurring healthcare organizations to adopt more than just basic EHRs, according to a new study. And many hospitals are making plans to spend more on other forms of IT in the next few years, suggesting that EHRs are becoming integral to the overall organizational strategy. "In hindsight, 2010 proved to be the year organizations ramped up their approach to meet the first stage of the [Meaningful Use] criteria," reads the report, Essentials of the U.S. Hospital IT Market, 6th Edition, a publication of HIMSS Analytics. In its survey of hospitals and integrated delivery networks nationwide, the research arm of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society found that spending on revenue cycle management (RCM), enterprise data warehousing, and associated areas such as business intelligence will continue growing for at least the next five years.
Allies of the medical device industry are waging an extraordinary campaign in Washington to discredit a coming report by one of the country's pre-eminent scientific groups that examines possible new regulations on the industry. The scientific group, the Institute of Medicine, is scheduled to release a report on Friday that could propose a tougher approval process for a wide range of devices like hip implants, hospital pumps and external heart defibrillators. The report, commissioned by the Food and Drug Administration, comes after several well-publicized recalls in recent years of devices that have failed in thousands of patients, causing numerous injuries. But a business group and others have taken the highly unusual step of making a pre-emptive strike, arguing that the report is biased. That attack began even before the study panel finished its review, and has intensified in recent weeks.
Organizations representing hospital CIOs and managers of group physician practices have serious reservations with a proposed HIPAA regulation that would give patients the right to see a report of who has viewed their medical records and other health data. Both the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives and the Medical Group Management Association said the "accounting for disclosures" rule asks too much of healthcare providers already grappling with implementing electronic health records and preparing to convert to with ANSI X-12 5010 transactions and ICD-10 coding. "CHIME believes the administrative burdens and related costs needed to compile, transmit, and then explain the proposed … access reports would divert the same resources needed to accomplish other important initiatives, including EHR Meaningful Use, and ICD-10 and HIPAA 5010 implementation, while providing very little value to patients," according to comments the Ann Arbor, MI-based organization submitted to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights.
Using computer-aided detection software to help analyze and interpret mammograms does not improve accuracy, but it does raise a woman's risk of being recalled for additional testing, according to a study published online July 27 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. An accompanying editorial suggested the need for further improvements in CAD software and described existing technology as "more harmful than beneficial." CAD software is used currently for analyzing three out of four mammograms in the U.S. and carries annual direct Medicare costs of more than $30 million. "Despite broad acceptance and use, it is unclear if the benefits of CAD during screening mammography outweigh its potential risks and costs," wrote Joshua J. Fenton, MD, at the University of California, Davis, and colleagues, who explained that the ideal system would detect high-risk cancers earlier and reduce the incidence of advanced cancer.