|
Cavanaugh Consulting Group® |
|
An Introduction to CCG |
|
Our Background |
|
What We Do |
|
Our Professional Staff |
|
Our Clients |
|
Industry Links |
|
Brochures |
|
Email Us |
|
Experienced and Knowledgeable Navigators |
|
· VA, Pentagon Eye 3M's Health Data Dictionary for Joint EHR Project Hyperlink · The departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs might be planning to use 3M's Health Data Dictionary to standardize terminology for their joint integrated electronic health record project, or iEHR project, Government Health IT reports (Sullivan, Government Health IT, 4/2). · VA and DOD are integrating their EHR systems so every service member can maintain a single EHR throughout his or her career and lifetime (iHealthBeat, 3/22). · 2012 HIMSS Leadership Survey - Based on the feedback of 302 healthcare IT professionals, nearly three quarters of the participants in this year’s Annual HIMSS Leadership Survey indicated that Federal mandates, including meeting Stage One of Meaningful Use and a conversion to ICD-10 would be the issues driving their efforts in the next two years. Hyperlink · For the past several years, respondents have identified the lack of adequate financial support as the top barrier to IT implementation. That is, until now. This year, 22 percent of respondents cited adequate staffing resources as their top challenge, followed by the lack of adequate financial support (14 percent) and vendors’ inability to effectively deliver products or services to respondents’ satisfaction (12 percent). No other response was identified by more than 10 percent of respondents. · 14 percent of respondents indicated that their organization either does not have an IT strategic plan (seven percent) or does have an IT strategic plan but that this plan is not integrated with the organizations’ overall strategic plan (seven percent). · Anoto Survey Finds Healthcare Industry Buried in Paperwork - More than 75% of respondents predict paperwork either to increase or not improve with heathcare reform; despite implementation of electronic health records, 80% of healthcare organizations still rely on paper records. Hyperlink · 63% of respondents said they spend anywhere from 25% to more than 75% of their time at work drafting or processing paperwork. · A significant majority – almost 80% – are still using paper records, despite either having or currently implementing an EHR system. · 78% of respondents believe the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) will either increase the amount of paperwork they will have to deal with or it will, at best, stay the same. · A CIO Survey of HIT Adoption Trends - Results of a 2012 study commissioned by The OPTUM INSTITUTE. Hyperlink 1. By January 2012, the vast majority of hospital ClO’s - 87 percent reported that their hospitals have EMR systems in place. Some 7 in 10 say they participate in health information exchanges (HIEs). 2. Of those with systems in place, 70 percent reported that they have met meaningful use stage 1 criteria, and three-quarters anticipated being able to meet expected meaningful use stage 2 criteria by 2014. 3. Nearly 80 percent of respondents said they had to either significantly modify their system in some way or purchase another system entirely. · KLAS report assesses vendor success, struggles with MU - KLAS interviewed 104 providers who successfully attested for meaningful use to analyze their vendor successes and struggles in the study "Meaningful Use Attestation 2012: Early Birds Take Flight." Although large vendors such as Cerner and Epic met already high expectations, some vendors on the CMS chart were more surprising, researchers say. CPSI was a standout in the community space with 139 hospitals, second only to Epic in having the largest percent of their client base successfully attest. Hyperlink · Enforcement of 5010 Standards for E-Claims Delayed Again (ICD-10 is also delayed) - the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that it is pushing back the enforcement date for new standards designed to streamline electronic insurance claims from March 31 to June 30. CMS said the 3-month delay will give physicians, insurers, claims clearinghouses, and software vendors more time to switch their billing systems over to the so-called Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Version 5010 standards, which will replace Version 4010. Medical societies have complained to CMS that many physicians who have attempted to submit electronic Medicare claims under the new standard have not been paid. CMS said in a press release today that physicians and other affected parties are making "steady progress" in the conversion. The Medicare fee-for-service program is successfully receiving and processing more than 70% of Medicare Part A claims, and more than 90% of Part B claims, in the Version 5010 format. CMS expects this success rate to reach 98% industry wide. The announcement marks the second Version 5010 postponement in 5 months. The deadline for converting to the new standards had been January 1, 2012, but CMS said last November that it was resetting it for March 31. Technically, the compliance deadline remains January 1; the agency is merely declining to enforce it. These 2 postponements come on top of a related pushback that organized medicine wrested from CMS regarding a new and expanded set of diagnostic codes called the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision, or ICD-10. CMS ordered the switch from the current ICD-9 set to ICD-10 as part of implementing HIPAA. Only Version 5010 standards incorporate the use of ICD-10. The American Medical Association told CMS that changing to ICD-10, which has roughly 5 times as many diagnostic codes as ICD-9, will strain practice finances and make it harder for physicians to afford electronic health record systems pushed by the government. The association asked CMS to find a simpler replacement for ICD-10, but the agency instead said it would extend the deadline for ICD-10 compliance, which had been October 1, 2013. CMS plans to announce a new compliance date once it has studied the matter. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/760346 · EMR Sales Exceed 17 Billion Dollars in 2011: Kalorama- sales of electronic medical records grew 14.2% in 2011, stronger growth than the previous year, according to Kalorama Information. The healthcare market research publisher just completed an annual report on the market which found increasing physician and hospital acceptance, robust competition and growth in EMR budgets. These factors culminated in a $17.9 billion market in 2011, according to the firm’s annual report, EMR 2012: the Market for Electronic Medical Records.Hyperlink · EMR Functionality Gaps Present Challenges to Healthcare Organizations with Multiple Specialties - KLAS interviewed over 700 medical professionals in order to fully understand how their EMR vendors tackle each of their varied specialties—both as an enterprise offering and by individual specialty. This report is designed not only to inform providers of the capability and performance of the measured vendors, but also to highlight where vendors excel and where they fall short when it comes to specialty content delivery and multispecialty coverage. Hyperlink · Cavanaugh Consulting Group observations and comments from HIMSS 2012: 1. HIMSS12 reached 37,032 attendees, surpassing the HIMSS11 attendance of 31,500. There were 1,123 exhibiting companies. Next year the annual conference will be in New Orleans and exhibit space will be limited. CCG will again be exhibiting and we have a space in the middle and on the main corridor. 2. Meditech and Cerner were back with sizable although not centrally located booths. Interesting to note that Meditech recently bought LSS into its fold and will be rewriting the software to make it fully compatible with its other offerings. Cerner continues to expand its ambulatory customer base. 3. The Interoperability booth was a full acre and included 140 vendors (by far the largest booth). Some vendors come to HIMSS, just to test their systems with others as it provides and excellent proving ground with everyone available in one place. 4. Another very large demonstration was the “Intelligent Hospital Pavilion” which may have been the second largest booth at this years conference. They provided information and "Real-Time" demonstrations of integrated solutions using auto-ID, RFID, RTLS, mobile devices, Sensor and Wireless technologies in a patient care environment. Here is a link to The RFID in Healthcare Consortium Hyperlink 5. There was a mobile computing section but it seemed most vendors were including tablets, smart phones, etc., as an access alternative in their primary booths. Nothing much new in the mobility section and the offerings appeared redundant with what individual vendors were offering in their booths. 6. There were many HIE providers including some we had not seen before such as http://www.alert-online.com/ (they provide much more than an HIE and have many clients but few in the US) 7. The OptumHealth booth was interesting. Hyperlink a creation of the $100B United Healthcare organization it has developed a $30Billion services company focusing on the emerging risk side of provider market. ACO’s and PHO’s seem to be a primary focus. It was named in April of last year and is made up of many companies we know under different names including Picis Inc, Ingenix, Axolotl, Executive Health Resources, CareMedic, QualityMetric, The Lewin Group, A–Life Medical, Aperture Credentialing and GeoAccess, Healthia Consulting, on so on. If this sounds like a variation on of the McKesson theme, it is. Optum is also spending its money in other parts of the world, hoping to become the worldwide leader. However, we could not find anyone who knew of a grand plan to make all these parts work together. 8. We noted more interest from international IT vendors than in previous HIMSS conferences. We did not count or categorize them and it is merely an observation based an the vendors we encountered. Perhaps this means that we will see more investment in truly global solutions especially in the market for clinical applications. · HIMSS Analytics and Advisory Board Report Shows Hospitals with Advanced EMR Systems Report Numerous Benefits - The study collected data from 33 chief information officers (CIOs) at Stage 6 or Stage 7. Hospitals with advanced EMRs explicitly target specific clinical objectives. At least half of respondents targeted improvements in quality measures for venous thromboembolism (VTE) (73 percent), stroke (70 percent), congestive heart failure (CHF) (64 percent), pneumonia (61 percent), acute myocardial infarction (AMI) (55 percent), and surgical (52 percent) patients. All respondent hospitals indicated having realized and documented at least one core measure benefit and one safety measure benefit from EMR implementation. More than three-quarters (79 percent) of the respondent hospitals reported multiple core measure and/or safety benefits. The most commonly reported benefits were again ADE reduction (73 percent), improvements in other patient safety indicators (58 percent), and improvements in VTE (55 percent) and CHF (48 percent) metrics. Hospitals that targeted specific quality benefits were reportedly much more successful in realizing those benefits. Over three quarters of hospitals that targeted improvements in pediatric asthma, pregnancy, AMI, CHF and VTE reported achieving those improvements, compared to 0 – 17 percent of those that didn’t target these conditions. Hyperlink · BridgeHead Survey Highlights Vendor Neutrality as Key Medical Imaging Challenge - According to the results, the majority of hospitals want vendor neutrality with more control over their image data. For example: Hyperlink 1. 51% of respondents said their organizations would likely require their next PACS application to be compatible with a third-party, vendor-neutral archive (VNA) for the storage of DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) images; 2. 16% said their organizations would not even consider purchasing a PACS application that was incompatible with a third-party VNA; 3. 36% said their facilities already had such an archive or planned to deploy one. · New study: The world is ready for mobile healthcare - According to a new study from The Boston Consulting Group and Telenor Group, mobile health technology can offer sizeable benefits to all countries, lead to economic growth and promise a better life for individuals. The necessary infrastructure is already in everyone's hands: Hyperlink 1. 7.4 billion mobile subscriptions projected by 2015 2. The technology richness and network capacity is sufficient, both on simple feature phones and on smart devices 3. Currently, more than 500 mobile health projects are taking place around the world 4. Costs in elderly care can be reduced by 25% with mobile healthcare 5. Maternal and perinatal mortality can be reduced by 30% 6. Twice as many rural patients can be reached per doctor 7. Tuberculosis treatment compliance can be improved by 30-70% 8. 30% of smartphone users are likely to use "wellness apps" by 2015 9. Costs related to data collection can be reduced by 24% 10. Smartphone is the most popular technology among doctors since the stethoscope · National eHealth Collaborative Shares Results Of 2012 Stakeholder Survey Highlights from the survey are included below: Hyperlink · “What are the most important benefits of health information exchange?” (Respondents were asked to select three) · 73% - Better care coordination · 65% - Providers and patients have the right information available when needed · 39% - Improved efficiency · 37% - Improved quality · “What are the biggest challenges to achieving widespread health information exchange?” (Respondents were asked to select three) · 61% - Funding and sustainability · 53% - Interoperability standards · 46% - Provider adoption · 46% - Disparate electronic medical record systems · 34% - Privacy and security · “How important is patient/consumer engagement to transforming healthcare?” · 95% - Very important or Important · 5% - Somewhat important · “What Health IT topics are of greatest interest to you?” · 60% - Interoperability standards · 57% - Meaningful use · 51% - Examples of HIE · 49% - Health IT policy updates · 49% - Healthcare reform · 44% - Privacy and security · Hiring Spree is Underway for Health Information Specialists - Health organizations are worried that there aren’t enough people with skills to handle the volume and complexity of health information as use of electronic health records (EHR) grows, according to information released this week by leaders of the PwC US Health Information Technology practice during the annual conference of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. Hyperlink
|
|
Healthcare IT News |
|
Cavanaugh Consulting Group CavanaughConsulting.org |
|
Quotes
“Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem” Woody Allen, quoted in the Monterey County, California, Herald
‘Many of life's failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up” Thomas Edison, quoted in the Los Angles Times
“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” Henry Ford, quoted in the Modesto, California, Bee
‘Every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward.” Thomas Edison, quoted in ScienceDaily.com
“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history can teach.” Aldous Huxley, quoted in The Wall Street Journal |