Electronic prescriptions among U.S. office-based prescribers increased 71% to 326 million in 2010, compared with 190 million the previous year, according to an annual progress report from e-prescribing network vendor Surescripts. Major drivers of the increase, according to report authors, include the electronic health records meaningful use incentives program and Medicare's e-prescribing incentive program, particularly among physicians without EHRs.
Farzad Mostashari, MD, the national coordinator for health IT, summarized the dynamic tension of "keeping our eye on the prize and feet on the ground, being clear about where we want to go but also being cognizant of where we are today. No hospital CIO should feel that they have to make a choice between do I prepare for accountable care or do I go for meaningful use. We should make meaningful use the roadmap of what we need to do to succeed where increasingly care is going to be reimbursed based on quality, efficiency, coordination and safety rather than pure quantity." Among the initial proposals, some measures from stage 1 were moved from the optional menu category to core or required for stage 2, such as incorporating laboratory results as structured data for 40% of test results ordered. In other measures from stage 1, the thresholds were increased to encompass more patients or make the electronic process more pervasive, such as the use of computerized physician order entry for 60% of patients with at least one medication order from 30%.
Hospital CIOs in the U.S. say they're planning to increase IT spending in 2011-- and they're not alone. Healthcare CIOs in the United Kingdom and Canada are also upping their IT investments this year, according to a new survey. Of the 152 hospital CIOs surveyed across North America, Europe, and Australia about their IT budgets and priorities over the next 24 month, 42% said they are increasing IT spending in 2011, according to a new report from U.K-based research firm Ovum. Almost a quarter, 22%, of the CIOs said they plan significant increases to IT spending in 2011, compared to only 14% who planned big increases last year. Last year, 22% of healthcare CIOs said they'd slash their IT budgets, but that figure dropped to 17% for 2011.
Doctors can make a stroke diagnosis using an iPhone application with the same accuracy as a one made using a medical computer workstation, a study from the University of Calgary's Faculty of Medicine revealed. The research, which was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, has significant implications for iPhone use among physicians treating stroke patients, and is another example of how mobile health applications are enabling doctors to make medical diagnoses based on images viewed on their mobile devices. Neuro-radiologists in the study looked at 120 recent consecutive non-contrast computed tomography (NCCT) brain scans and 70 computed tomography angiogram head scans that were obtained from the Calgary Stroke Program database. The scans were read by two neuro-radiologists, on a medical diagnostic workstation and on an iPhone, and the results showed that there was a 94% to 100% rate of accuracy for diagnosing acute stroke compared with a medical workstation that has a much larger screen.
Calling consumers "the most significant untapped resource" in healthcare, a coalition of consumer, labor, and patient advocacy groups has articulated a vision for a technology-enabled, communication-based healthcare system that considers patients both partners and leaders in their own care. "We are not interested in using technology merely to tweak a dysfunctional system; we want to transform it," reads the Consumer Platform for Health IT from the Consumer Partnership for eHealth, which includes organizations such as AARP, the National Consumers League, the National Health Law Program, and the American Heart Association. "We believe that consumer, patient, and caregiver engagement is the game-changing element of a comprehensive, effective strategy for reforming our overburdened, overpriced healthcare system, through more effective use of information," said the platform statement.
A top Office for Civil Rights official who played a big role in shaping law and regulations surrounding HIPAA has left the government for a position with a law firm. Adam H. Greene, a 12-year health law veteran and key regulator for the HIPAA privacy and security enforcer under the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), is joining the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in their Washington, D.C. office, effective May 16, the law office announced in a press release Monday, May 9.During the past five years at OCR, Greene, according to the release, has been one of the preeminent national experts on privacy, security and breach notification, speaking on behalf of OCR to consumer and industry associations at more than 15 conferences since the beginning of 2010.