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Monday, April 2, 2012
Spending on security of health data breaches to hit $70B by 2015 - FierceHealthIT
With the cost of healthcare data breaches continuing to rise year after year, it shouldn't come as a surprise that spending on the security of that information is estimated to hit $40 billion this year, and balloon to $70 billion three years from now, according to a recently published report from Princeton, N.J.-based consulting firm The Boyd Company.
Specifically, investments in electronic health records and mobile technology to meet government compliance standards are cited as key to the expected spending splurge. Because of the inevitable increase in medical records sharing, new and improved efforts will be mandatory to keeping health data safe.
The report breaks down current data security costs in the U.S. by city, with New York ($32.6 million), San Francisco ($27.8 million) and Los Angeles ($25.7 million) spending the most annually on such protection.
"In an industry whose cost structures are under constant scrutiny by patients, insurance companies and government agencies, comparative economics are ruling investment and location decisions for new facilities," the authors wrote. "In today's difficult economy, improving the bottom line on the cost side of the ledger is often easier than on the revenue side for many healthcare services companies."
May 12, 2008 By Annie Macios, For The Record, Vol. 20 No. 10 P. 14
A pair of studies raises concerns about the viability of implementing mobile, point-of-care solutions.
As healthcare documentation becomes more automated and streamlined, technology enters into the equation across the continuum of care—including at the point of care. Mobile documentation at the point of care can do wonders for workflow and documentation; however, its implementation is not without challenges.
Two recent reports by the Spyglass Consulting Group—“Healthcare Without Bounds: Point of Care Computing for Nursing” and “Healthcare Without Bounds: Point of Care Computing for Physicians”—highlight the current state of mobile computing in hospitals and ambulatory care. They present the findings of an end-user market study focused on the adoption of point-of-care computing by physicians and nurses across the United States.
The reports uncover strong opinions gleaned from more than 200 in-depth interviews regarding the opportunities and challenges for adopting computing solutions at the point of care. It also identifies the market drivers, trends, opportunities, and challenges in using mobile computing devices.
According to the survey, clinicians believe the right point-of-care computing device depends on physical location, urgency of the situation, tasks to be performed, complexity of the required applications, and, most importantly, personal preferences. Gregg Malkary, founder and managing director for Spyglass Consulting Group, says there is really no ideal device for point-of-care computing thanks to these variables.
Smartphones/PDAs While viewed by physicians as an ideal device for communicating, managing personal and clinical workflows, and accessing stand-alone, reference-based tools, smartphones are used by fewer than 14% of the physicians interviewed to access single-function clinical applications for managing patient data, prescribing medications electronically, and capturing patient billing charges.
There is a big push for physicians to use smartphones and PDAs for accessing clinical applications, but the study shows that doctors are not using it in this way because screen size presents a problem. “If given a choice between a 2- X 2-inch screen or a full-size terminal, they’ll choose the full-size screen,” says Malkary. For that reason, he says smartphones/PDAs currently have limited clinical utility but great potential.
Tablet PC Tablet PC use varies based on the environment. “For the hospital-based clinician, it is too heavy and its battery life is only two to three hours for what is often a 10- to 12-hour workday,” says Malkary. Tablet PC applications resemble DOS applications, and with wireless networks there are often dead zones because of poor handoffs within the hospital. According to the report, more than 90% of nurses are reluctant to use the tablet PC for bedside nursing.
In an ambulatory environment, however, tablet PCs are more prevalent and have more widespread adoption because there is limited geography. Malkary says the tablet PC is more convenient in this setting because there are usually no more than 30 steps between offices rather than the five or six miles that hospital-based clinicians may encounter during an average shift. Financials also come into play in ambulatory settings, where doctors are more financially motivated to use tablet PCs because they pay for them themselves, according to Malkary.
Mobile Clinical Carts Patient safety concerns have driven 56% of the healthcare organizations represented in the Spyglass Consulting survey to implement departmental initiatives that include mobile computer carts. Ideally, these carts enable nurses to generate structured clinical documentation, automate safety checks and procedures through bar code technology, access information on demand, automate the collection of vital sign data, facilitate real-time communication among all care team members, and practice evidence-based nursing.
Mobile clinical carts, also known as computers on wheels (COWs), are the workhorse of hospital-based nursing. Unfortunately, while the cart is mobile, it is usually left in the hallway due to space limitations in hospital rooms. Another reason for COWs’ lack of use at the site of care is that it is not yet required by hospital administration. However, “That will change as medication administration moves to bar coding,” says Malkary.
According to the survey, rather than COWs, nurses prefer to use a fixed station for documentation. “If they can find a terminal every 10 yards, they will use those instead,” says Malkary. He also notes that nurses often do their documentation on paper first and then input the report afterward.
Wall-Mounted PCs According to the survey, these devices are gradually replacing COWs as a more useful point-of-care computing tool. Ironically, COWs have helped establish wall-mounted PCs. “The good thing about the COWs is that they let you know where to put a fixed station,” says Malkary.
Putting Them Into Practice While smartphones, tablet PCs, mobile clinical carts, and wall-mounted PCs offer opportunities for point-of-care computing, the pitfalls associated with these devices sometimes overshadow the benefits. Malkary says better communication can help overcome many barriers. “Facilities have to develop a better solution and get the clinicians involved in the process. IT makes recommendations on the technology, but they also need to understand the clinical workflow,” he says.
Malkary says getting clinicians involved in the decision making for such devices will improve the chances of implementing a user-accepted solution and, ultimately, improve workflow, patient care, and patient safety.
The physician survey suggests that widespread adoption of these devices depends on how practitioners perceive their use. When looking to increase the adoption of point-of-care computing technology, Malkary says the investment a facility is able to make, as well as the return on investment, are important factors to consider. “In looking at the investment perspective, you have to ensure the technology will deliver an automated hardware, software, infrastructure, and workflow solution,” he says. “If you only automate the current system that you have, that helps, but you have to automate across the board for the adoption to be more widespread. It all comes down to eliminating inefficient processes.”
Malkary says the point-of-care device selected at a particular facility depends on the investment an organization can make. With IT investments, facilities usually start with an electronic medical record (EMR) and a digital infrastructure. EMR deployment usually takes a significant amount of capital and includes many subsystems, leaving little left in the budget for items such as point-of-care computing technology. “But the requirements of doing documentation at the point of care need to be automated, and it takes a lot of deployments and experimentation to get to a point where it works most efficiently,” says Malkary. By coming up with standardized solutions that work facilitywide, the adoption of these devices can potentially increase, he adds.
Communication overload can interfere with practitioners’ ability to get the clinical information they want when they want it. “The devices offer a lot of support tools for doctors, but they [physicians] also get flooded with a lot of alerts and reminders to respond to. If physicians click off an alert in an effort to go straight to the clinical data, then they have added liability should some medical situation arise from that alert,” says Malkary.
Citing inefficient processes as a common difficulty of effectively employing mobile computing, Malkary finds that a facility’s technical infrastructure is often inadequate to support work from point-of-care devices. “Security is a big impediment, especially when a physician might need to know 10 or more user names and passwords because security is made so stringent. A doctor might have to log in 80 to 90 times a day, which is an unrealistic expectation,” he says.
Infection Risk According to the survey, 65% of physicians say they fear infection if they use mobile computing devices at the point of care, a 160% increase from 2005.
“Point-of-care computing devices are a large vector of contamination, and hand washing is the key to reducing the risk of infection. It’s a real infection control risk, but it’s not always been seen as a risk,” says Malkary. He notes that perceptions are changing now that Medicare is no longer paying for medical mistakes such as infection caused within the hospital.
Success Stories While the news from the Spyglass surveys is not encouraging, the deployment of mobile computing technology is working at some facilities. Medstar Health in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C., region and Camden-Clark Memorial Hospital in Parkersburg, W.Va., are examples of how point-of-care computing devices can be successfully deployed in healthcare facilities big and small.
MedStar Health, the largest healthcare system in its region, introduced mobile devices to its physicians in 1998 and has experienced success with the technology since then. Included on Hospitals & Health Networks’ list of the top 100 most wired hospitals for four consecutive years, MedStar is a nonprofit, integrated system that includes a community-based network of eight hospitals with more than 5,000 physicians.
Used at five of the system’s eight hospitals, PatientKeeper, which is deployed on Palm Treo smartphones, helps physicians collect and input charges at the point of care. As any healthcare administrator knows, being paid appropriately and in a timely manner is an integral part of keeping a healthcare facility running smoothly—a fact that physicians are also keenly aware of. “We are able to provide the hospitalist physicians with patient billing demographics through an interface, and it provides a much more efficient and effective way of capturing inpatient charges,” says Suzanne Carter, Medstar’s vice president of information systems customer service.
Staci Parks, the project leader for the PatientKeeper initiative, says physicians responded positively to the technology, which allows them to view and act on information. Its applications give physicians the power to access patients’ electronic records, write prescriptions, enter charges for services, document patient encounters, and send messages securely to other caregivers in a single, integrated environment available at the point of care.
The most noticeable benefit has been capturing a more effective charge cost, mitigating the problems associated with misplaced paperwork, and the lapse in time between the point of care and documentation. Benefits are also realized on the administrative side, where the practice management staff know instantly which patients the doctors have seen. “The entire process has been sped up,” says Parks, who adds that the initiative will expand to additional facilities within the system and into surgical specialty areas.
Camden-Clark Memorial Hospital, a 375-bed facility that is also listed among the top 100 most wired hospitals, as well as one of the top 25 most wireless facilities, adopted mobile computing carts approximately six years ago. Within the last 16 months, after a long discovery process and a one-month trial with multiple carts, Camden-Clark adopted Artromick mobile computing carts to replace more bulky, cumbersome equipment that wasn’t being used as much as it otherwise might be.
Nursing informatics analyst Kerry Cottrell works with the nursing staff on a daily basis and has seen firsthand the improved workflow and time savings the new mobile computing carts have offered the hospital. Among the benefits Cottrell reports are the ability to use the carts at the bedside, the additional area for charting that is decentralized from the nursing station, and the capability to provide readily accessible information in a timely manner.
“It improves efficiency by allowing one-time documentation at bedside rather than once at bedside then again at the nursing station. The nurses are using them pretty extensively—a lot more than ever before,” says Cottrell, adding that it saves time for nurses, who can quickly access information over the wireless network and no longer have to save their charting until a computer is available at the nursing station. The new mobile computing carts are so efficient, in fact, that the old ones are no longer at the facility, says Cottrell.
Besides being easy to use, Cottrell says the carts are ergonomically efficient and adjustable, easy to move and control, and have a better, more easily rechargeable battery life than those on previous carts, all adding to the overall acceptance and successful implementation of the technology.
— Annie Macios is a freelance writer based in Doylestown, Pa.
As part of my continuing series of posts about EHR Down time (see my previous Cost of EHR Down Time and Reasons Your EHR Will Go Down posts), I thought it would be interesting to look at how a SaaS EHR down time is different from an in house EHR down time.
I’ll use the list of reasons your EHR go down as my discussion points for how it’s different with a SaaS EHR versus an in house EHR. On each point, I’ll see if either approach has an advantage over the other.
Power Outage – Certainly a power outage will impact both types of EHR implementations. If your computer or router doesn’t have power, then it doesn’t matter where your EHR is hosted. However, many clinics use laptops which can run for quite a while without being plugged in. Plus, a small UPS for your network equipment is pretty cheap and easy to implement.
However, a good UPS for your own server will cost a bit more to implement. Plus, the UPS won’t likely last very long. Most UPS are there to give you enough time to power down your system properly or to handle a short power outage. Of course, in this case we’re talking about a small clinic implementation. I have done an EMR implementation where we had some nice UPS and even a backup generator. However, this is the exception.
Conclusion: Slight Advantage for the SaaS EHR
Hard Drive Failure – Certainly the failure of a hard drive in your desktop machine will affect both types of EHR install equally. So, that part is a wash. However, the hard drive failure on your local server is much more of an issue than a SaaS EHR vendor. At least, I’ve never heard of a hard drive failure causing an issue for any SaaS software vendor of any type. Both in house and SaaS EHR implementations can implement redundant hard drives, but SaaS EHR vendors have to implement redundant servers.
Conclusion: Advantage SaaS EHR
Power Supply Failure – This one is similar to the Hard Drive failure. I know a lot of EHR vendors that have their clinics buy an in house server that doesn’t have redundant power supplies. I can’t imagine a SaaS EHR vendor buying a server without redundant power supplies even if the redundancy is across servers.
Conclusion: Advantage SaaS EHR
Network Cable – Cables can get pulled out of switches just as easily as servers. So, I conclude that it will affect SaaS EHR and in house EHR the same.
Conclusion: Tie
Switch/Router – Loss of a switch/router will cause either a SaaS EHR or in house EHR to go down.
Conclusion: Tie
Motherboard Failure – An in house server only has one motherboard. If that motherboard fails, you better hope you have a great tech support contract to get a motherboard to you quickly (For example, Dell has a 4 hour support contract which is amazing, but pricey). Certainly a motherboard can fail for a SaaS EHR as well, but since they likely have multiple servers, they can just roll the users over to another server while they replace the motherboard.
Conclusion: Advantage SaaS EHR
EHR Software Issue – This is a hard one to analyze since a software issue like this could happen on either type of EHR install. It really has more to do with the EHR vendor’s development and testing process than it has to do with the way the EHR software is delivered.
You could argue that because the SaaS EHR is all hosted by he company, they will be able to see the issues you’re having first hand and will have tested on the hardware they have in place. A client server/in house EHR install could be on a variety of EHR systems that the EHR vendor didn’t know about and couldn’t test as they developed and deployed the system. So, I could see a slight benefit for the SaaS EHR system.
However, one disadvantage to the SaaS EHR system is that they are hosting it across dozens of servers and so when something goes wrong on a server it’s sometimes hard to figure out what’s going wrong since all the servers are the same. Maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but we’ve all seen times when certain users of a service are down, but not others.
Conclusion: Maybe a slight advantage to SaaS EHR
Internet Outage – This one is the most clear cut benefit to an in house server. When your internet connection goes down, the in house server keeps plugging along no problem. Loss of your internet connection with a SaaS EHR is terrible. No doubt that’s often the greatest weakness of a SaaS EHR. Although, it can be partially mitigated with multiple internet connections (ie. wired internet and wireless broadband internet).
Conclusion: Advantage In House EHR
I have to admit that I didn’t realize going into this analysis that it was going to be a landslide for the SaaS EHR. Although, that’s quite clear from this analysis. When it comes to EHR down time, the SaaS EHR is much better. Unless, you live in an area where the internet connection is unreliable and slow. Then, you don’t really have much choice since SaaS EHR needs a reliable internet connection.
It’s also worth noting that this article only talks about how EHR down time relates to SaaS EHR versus in house EHR. There are certainly plenty of other arguments that could be made for and against either implementation method such as: speed, privacy, security, cost, etc.
TAMPA, FL – The majority of patients and physicians have a positive perception of electronic documentation, according to a survey conducted by Sage Healthcare Division, a unit of Sage North America.
“The adoption of electronic health records has grown in recent years as the U.S. government’s incentive plans and the benefits of these systems are realized by more and more office-based physicians,” said Betty Otter-Nickerson, president of Sage Healthcare Division. “The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics estimates that more than half of office-based physicians have adopted a basic EHR, while more than 10 percent have adopted a fully functional system, such as Sage Intergy EHR. The results of the study will help Sage Healthcare design solutions that maximize the benefit to physicians and their patients.”
The Sage Healthcare Insights study examines the effect of implementing an electronic health record system on both physicians and their patients. The purpose is to understand how the perceptions of physicians who use EHR systems differ or are similar to the perceptions of the patients who recall seeing their physician use the system. According to the study, patients felt more comfortable with physicians that used an EHR system, and more importantly, felt that the information contained in the medical record was more accurate when they physically saw information being entered electronically. “What we learned is patients like to see their verbatim information entered into the record as they said it, not as the doctor interpreted it,” added Otter-Nickerson.
Agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services on Jan. 13 officially published two rules covering the meaningful use of electronic health records provisions of the HITECH Act within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Publication of the rules starts the clock for the public comment period, with both rules having a March 15 deadline for comment. The proposed rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services defines "meaningful use" of electronic health records to qualify for Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments. It lays out a series of measures to collect and report data to government agencies. The rule is 169 pages long in a PDF format.
An interim final rule from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology sets initial standards, implementation specifications and certification criteria for EHR technology. The rule is 33 pages long in a PDF format. A forthcoming rule will establish an EHR certification program.
Ran across this great video by the Fox Group. The video runs about 10 minutes and goes into pretty good detail into the operational benefits, financial incentives, and potential pitfalls of migrating a medical practice to an electronic health record system.
By several different measures, the past President and current President of the United States have little in common. But both do share a vision of transitioning the American healthcare system to the use of electronic health records (EHRs) as quickly as possible – George W. Bush backed a 2014 deadline and Barack Obama has provisioned incentives within ARRA to drive adoption by 2015.
The byproduct of this type of commitment has spurred heavy investment in the healthcare IT industry, focused primarily on the development of EHR technology to improve operational efficiency and patient care. So, why are some physicians rejecting the notion of EHRs or in some cases … de-installing them? You would think with strong Presidential support and no shortage of financial investment in the industry that penetration of EHRs into the physician market would exceed 33 percent.
The reality is that at least 67 percent of physicians today who receive information from caregivers or labs outside of their care setting depend on paper. What they care about is having timely and reliable access to the information they need – not whether it comes to them in paper or electronic format – and they most certainly won’t stop depending on paper overnight. In fact, even physicians with EHRs often must depend on paper, especially if their EHR is not interfaced to the data sources. Without interfaces, their EHRs are empty and, by many accounts, not very useful. If the EHR isn’t useful, they say, why disrupt the familiar paper-based workflow? [Continue Reading]
First Lady Michelle Obama Announces Release of $851 Million from Recovery Act to Upgrade & Expand Community Health Centers, To Serve More Patients
Grants Will Support Centers that Provide Care to Millions of Americans
Washington, DC – First Lady Michelle Obama today visited Unity’s Upper Cardozo Health Center and announced the release of $851 million in grants to address immediate and pressing health center facility and equipment needs and increase access to health care for millions of Americans The money was made available by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and comes as more Americans join the ranks of the uninsured due to the economic downturn and skyrocketing health costs.
"Community Health Centers provide care to the Americans who need it most and their work has never been more important," said Obama. "These grants will help Unity’s Upper Cardozo and thousands of centers across the country expand and serve more Americans who simply can’t afford insurance coverage anymore. ."
The Recovery Act Capital Improvement Program (CIP) grants will support the construction, repair and renovation of over 1,500 health center sites nationwide. More than 650 centers will use the funds to purchase new equipment or health information technology (HIT) systems, and nearly 400 health centers will adopt and expand the use of electronic health records.
To see a list of Recovery Act CIP grantees by state, go to www.hhs.gov/recovery.]
Federal CIO Launches IT Spending Site Built For Sharing
To promote greater government transparency and public access to information, US CIO Vivek Kundra has launched a new Web site for tracking spending on government IT projects. By Thomas ClaburnInformationWeek July 1, 2009 02:05 PM
At the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City on Tuesday, the federal government's recently appointed CIO Vivek Kundra announced the launch of USAspending.gov, a federal IT spending Web site that allows anyone to track federal IT contracting dollars and grants.
The site was developed to comply with the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, a law that requires public organizations to disclose receipt of federal funds.
As a senator, Barack Obama was one of the sponsors of the bill; as President, he has continued to support the principle of greater government transparency, with some notable exceptions like White House visitor records.
EHRs Being Used to Track H1 N1 May 4, 2009 From EHR Scope Blog
Last week I created a post that discussed how EHRs could be used to help track and suppress an infectious disease outbreak such as the Swine Flu. Today I can report on how it is actually being done!
Minnesota based Quinnian Health, announced it has partnered with Dallas’s TelaDoc Medical Services to provide remote consultations, and access to its Qhealth Platform.The announcement comes as the WHO has officially declared H1 N1, or Swine Flu as Pandemic. [Continue Reading]
I've posted surveys on LinkedIn about using the terminology EHR/EMR several times and got so many odd responses that made finding this post really enjoyable. Below is a great blog post from the EHR Scope Blog.
PHRs, EHRs, EMRs –Digesting the Alphabet Soup
April 17, 2009
PHR, EHR, EMR , can all make HIT a bit confusing PDQ (Pretty Darn Quick). Certainly everyone agrees what the letters in the three acronyms stand for – Personal Health Record, Electronic Health Record, and Electronic Medical Record. Yet the terms are often misunderstood and misused – even within the industry.
The two most often used interchangeably, albeit incorrectly are EMR and EHR. To the layperson and even to healthcare professionals it may sound like there is very little difference between an Electronic Health Record and an Electronic Medical Record, but there are clearly defined distinctions, depending of course on who is doing the defining.
It looks as though President Obama is really moving along with his health plan by cleaning up goverment right off the get-go. The Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs both have active EHR programs but as of now have been unable to share information back and forth.
With an announcement earlier this week, plans are being forged which will begin the process of creating a link between the two systems. This will be a model for healthcare facilties throughout the country if all goes as planned.
Hopefully they share their problems and solutions so other implementors can learn from the experience.
White House Announces Plan to Integrate DOD and VA EHRs
The Obama administration announced this week that the Departments of Defense(DOD) and Veterans Affairs(VA) will finally create a path to integrate the flow of patients’ information between DOD’s AHLTA and the VA’s VistAEHR platforms. Each of the disparate systems in and of themselves represents a successful implementation of EHRs, however until now there has been little or no ability to transfer patient data between the two systems.
The road to electronic health record (EHR) adoption just got a little sweeter for physicians with President Obama’s recent signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Widely referred to as the economic stimulus package, the act provides approximately $35 billion in Medicare and Medicaid incentives to eligible professionals for “meaningful use” of qualified EHR systems in their practices (use of a hospital EHR does not qualify the physician or provider for these incentives). Read More >>
Cygnus now has a network-based lock solution as a security option for all of its wall mounted computer workstations. The networked lock will make it easier for the staff to access the cabinet with the simple swipe of a proximity card. The new lock will also make it easier to monitor access by creating a real-time audit trail for each cabinet.
One of the many great features of this lock system is the ease of administration. Users can be added and deleted, access restricted to certain floors, and much more all from a central location with the use of a simple software interface.
The lock is powered over the ethernet network (PoE) so there is no need for an additional power supply to be dropped by an electrician. Setup is simple due to the lock being a true IP device.
For more information visit the netlock product page. Talk to a product specialist at 888-760-8159.
From HIPAA.com Ed Jones, Author & Healthcare Authority The Senate joined the House on Friday evening, February 13, 2009, in passing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which includes provisions relating to Health Information Technology. Title XIII of Division A and Title IV of Division B together are known as the “Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act” or the “HITECH Act.” We will be highlighting attributes of the HITECH Act through the end of February. READ MORE>>
Today Ed Jones writes on HIPAA home site about the new American Recovery and Reinvestment Act(ARRA).
Tuesday afternoon the Senate passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the so-called Economic Stimulus bill. Previously, the House of Representatives passed its version, H.R. 1. Now, the joint House-Senate conference committee will resolve funding and language differences in the House and Senate versions of ARRA. As we have noted earlier, each of these versions contains incentives for adoption of health information technologies, which are described in the so-called HITECH provisions of the House and Senate versions. President Obama is expected to sign a reconciled bill in the near future, assuming that the Democrats in the Senate can achieve at least 60 votes in a procedural motion to move the bill to the floor of the Senate for a vote. Once signed into law, HIPAA.com will provide a detailed analysis of funding, language, and timeframe provisions of the reconciled HITECH provisions.
Obama's national health records system will be costly, daunting
I've been posting quite a bit about the new administration's e-health records push. While the initial cost is steep ($10 billion per year for the next five years) it would end up creating jobs while saving the nation about $300 billion per year by cutting down on duplication, false claims, errors and more.
Here is a great article by Lucas Mearian from ComputerWorld.
January 20, 2009 (Computerworld) President Barack Obama has said that a national electronic health records system will be a priority in his first term, not just for streamlining workflow at hospitals and physician offices but to cut costs and improve the quality of health care.
And while he has pledged to invest $10 billion a year over the next five years on the effort, the price tag for such a system could be closer to $100 billion over the next 10 years, according to experts. They also note that sticking to his five-year timetable could prove to be daunting. READ MORE>>
The HIPAA regulations are pretty strict and there is a rumble that HIPAA slows down research and gets in the way of standard medical practice. But should there be concern with making regulations tighter when no one enforces it as it is? Check out this recently posted is this article by Anne Zieger, editor of FierceHealthIT. Why toughen HIPAA when nobody enforces it?January 25, 2009 — 7:25pm ET | By Anne Zieger This week, House Ways and Means Committee members should be considering an economic stimulus package that includes provisions to beef up HIPAA. Yes, you heard me right--they're thinking about adding more stringent protections to a law that virtually never gets enforced anyway.READ MORE>>
Looks as though the Senate Appropriations Committee is proposing an additional $3-5 billion for health information technology. With the date set for 2014, healthcare facilities will be required to implement electronic health records and this certainly appears to be assistance towards those costs. Below is an article by Patrick Yoest from the Wall Street Journal.
Proposed spending in the U.S. Senate's stimulus package includes $3 billion more for health information technology than that proposed by the U.S. House, a summary released Friday by the Senate Appropriations Committee shows. READ MORE >>
Panel releases details on $20B in health IT spending
We're finally starting to get a sneak peak at the proposed incentive package promised by the new administration. There certainly appears to be a big push to get physicians and health care facilities on board with electronic health records. Below is a great article from Alice Lipowicz on the Federal Computer Week website. - - - -
The House Ways and Means Committee is calling for $20 billion in spending to encourage the adoption of health information technology, including payments of as much as $65,000 to physicians who can demonstrate that they are using electronic data. The committee's chairman, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), released details Jan 16 of the Health IT for Economic and Clinical Health Act, which is to be included in an economic stimulus package.
The bill seeks to advance the use of health IT, including electronic health records, Rangel said in a news release. The measure would spend $20 billion on incentives to encourage doctors and hospitals to use health IT, the news release states. The incentives include payments of $40,000 to $65,000 to doctors who can show they are "meaningfully utilizing health IT, such as through the reporting of quality measures," the release states.READ MORE >>>
