Tag: HIE

How Not to Create an HIE

Dec 1, 2018

By JOHN MOORE

Sometimes, the job of an analyst can be so frustrating.

A core part of the Chilmark Research charter is to educate healthcare stakeholders on critical trends in the marketplace that will lead to better, more successful adoption of IT and subsequently improve the health of the nation (if not the world). There are a couple of things we have learned along the way:

1) Little if anything gets adopted at scale in the healthcare sector (and for that matter virtually any other market) if it does not provide value to the end user that exceeds risk. That risk could be privacy, it could be a productivity hit, it may be liability; plenty of risk in healthcare, both perceived and real to trip up an IT initiative.

HIE Market Snippets

Dec 1, 2018

By JOHN MOORE

In January, we released our HIE Market Report: Analysis & Trends which was extremely well-received. Sales have exceeded our rather optimistic projections – great for us. But what we are most proud of and honestly what keeps us going is that others are also gaining value from this report, especially those looking to purchase an HIE solution. As one large healthcare organization recently told us:

Your report has been invaluable in not only our vendor assessment process, but how our organization needs to think about our long-term HIE strategy.

We have also heard on numerous occasions the need to update the report as the market is changing so quickly and indeed it has. Several HIE vendors have been acquired, others have withdrawn from the market and there continues to be an influx of new entrants hoping to capitalize on what remains an immature market.

There are also a number of underlying trends that have disrupted the market to varying degrees. Thus, we have begun putting together our research plan for an update of the HIE report. As part of that process we have been contacting and interviewing those who purchased the first report to get their feedback on what they would like to see in the next edition. Several interviews have been conducted so far and we even had a briefing with one HIE vendor that we had given up for dead, but no, looks they are very much alive and may (emphasis on may) become a strong player in the future provided their new parent invests in them at the level required to build market share.

Lessons Learned from China

Nov 1, 2018

By John Halamka, MD

On Sunday I returned from a week in Shanghai and Hangzhou. A remarkable trip that included daily meetings with government, academic, and clinical leaders. What did I learn?

In China, about 5% of the GDP is spent on healthcare per year compared to 16% in the US. Although there is wide variation in lifespan and other population health measures between rural and urban settings, there are few interesting observations about Chinese healthcare:

*It’s a single payer, publicly funded system that provides universal healthcare via a 14% payroll tax.

*There is a single national set of regulations and policies applied to all hospitals, clinics, and doctors

*There is a single set of national privacy laws

*Immunization is mandatory for the entire population

*There’s a single national healthcare identifier

EHRs are widely used in China, however they are optimized for episodes of care, using templates for capture of selected data elements specific to a disease i.e. hypertension, hepatitis, diabetes. The volume of patients is overwhelming – in one hospital I visited (Huashan), the dermatology clinic sees 4000 patients per day. The Chinese EHR enables clinics to document the basics of a problem specific encounter, facilitating extremely fast throughput. The downside of this is that there is not a longitudinal problem list, medication reconciliation, or coordination of care to avoid repeat testing.

Separating Professional and Hospital Records

Nov 1, 2018

By John Halamka, MD

As Patient Centered Medical Homes and Accountable Care Organizations form, the lines between professional and hospital practice become increasingly murky.

CMS has long required that hospital and professional records be separable, so that in the case of audits or subpoenas, it is clear who recorded what.

Today, the BIDMC ACO continues to expand into the community, adding owned hospitals, affiliated hospitals, owned practices, and affiliated practices.

Our strategy to date has been to use our home-built inpatient and ambulatory systems at the academic medical center, Meditech in the community hospitals, and eClinicalWorks in private ambulatory practices which are part of our ACO.

We share data among these applications via private and public HIE transactions – viewing, pushing, and pulling.

The challenge with emerging ACOs is that professionals are likely to work in a variety of locations, each of which may have different IT systems and each of which serves as a separate steward of the medical record from a CMS point of view.

Our clinicians are asking the interesting question – can I use a single EHR for all patients I see regardless of the location I see them?

Our legal experts are studying this question.

The Futility of Patient Matching

Oct 25, 2018• 5

By ADRIAN GROPPER, MD

The original sin of health records interoperability was the loss of consent in HIPAA. In 2000, when HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) first became law, the Internet was hardly a thing in healthcare. The Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) was not a thing until 2004. 2009 brought us the HITECH Act and Meaningful Use and 2016 brought the 21st Century Cures Act with “information blocking” as clear evidence of bipartisan frustration. Cures, in 2018, begat TEFCA, the draft Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement. The next update to the draft TEFCA is expected before 2019 which is also the year that Meaningful Use Stage 3 goes into effect.

Over nearly two decades of intense computing growth, the one thing that has remained constant in healthcare interoperability is a strategy built on keeping patient consent out of the solution space. The 2018 TEFCA draft is still designed around HIPAA and ongoing legislative activity in Washington seeks further erosion of patient consent through the elimination of the 42CFR Part 2 protections that currently apply to sensitive health data like behavioral health.

The futility of patient matching without consent parallels the futility of large-scale interoperability without consent. The lack of progress in patient matching was most recently chronicled by Pew through a survey and a Pew-funded RAND report. The Pew survey was extensive and the references cite the significant prior efforts including a 100-expert review by ONC in 2014 and the $1 million CHIME challenge in 2017 that was suspended – clear evidence of futility.

Hoarding Patient Data is a Lousy Business Strategy: 7 Reasons Why

Oct 17, 2018• 18

By VINCE KURAITIS & LESLIE KELLY HALL

Among many healthcare providers, it’s been long-standing conventional wisdom (CW) that hoarding patient data is an effective business strategy to lock-in patients — “He who holds the data, wins”. However…we’ve never seen any evidence that this actually works…have you?

We’re here to challenge CW. In this article we’ll explore the rationale of “hoarding as business strategy”, review evidence suggesting it’s still prevalent, and suggest 7 reasons why we believe it’s a lousy business strategy:

Data Hoarding Doesn’t Work — It Doesn’t Lock-In Patients or Build Affinity
Convenience is King in Patient Selection of Providers
Loyalty is Declining, Shopping is Increasing
Providers Have a Decreasingly Small “Share” of Patient Data
Providers Don’t Want to Become a Lightning Rod in the “Techlash” Backlash
Hoarding Works Against Public Policy and the Law
Providers, Don’t Fly Blind with Value-Based Care

Background

In the video below, Dr. Harlan Krumholz of Yale University School of Medicine capsulizes the rationale of hoarding as business strategy.

We encourage you to take a minute to listen to Dr. Krumholz, but if you’re in a hurry we’ve abstracted the most relevant portions of his comments:

“The leader of a very major healthcare system said this to me confidentially on the phone… ‘why would we want to make it easy for people to get their health data…we want to keep the patients with us so why wouldn’t we want to make it just a little more difficult for them to leave.’ …I couldn’t believe it a physician health care provider professional explaining to me the philosophy of that health system.”

Ensuring that the 21st Century Cures Act Health IT Provisions Promotes Interoperability and Data Exchange

Oct 16, 2018• 4

By KENNETH D. MANDL, MD; DAN GOTTLIEB MPA;
JOSH C. MANDEL, MD

The opportunity has never been greater to, at long last, develop a flourishing health information economy based on apps which have full access to health system data–for both patients and populations–and liquid data that travels to where it is needed for care, management and population and public health. A provision in the 21st Century Cures Act could transform how patients and providers use health information technology. The 2016 law requires that certified health information technology products have an application programming interface (API) that allows health information to be accessed, exchanged, and used “without special effort” and that provides “access to all data elements of a patient’s electronic health record to the extent permissible under applicable privacy laws.”

After nearly two years of regulatory work, an important rule on this issue is now pending at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), typically a late stop before a proposed rule is issued for public comment. It is our hope that this rule will contain provisions to create capabilities for patients to obtain complete copies of their EHR data and for providers and patients to easily integrate apps (web, iOS and Android) with EHRs and other clinical systems.

Modern software systems use APIs to interact with each other and exchange data. APIs are fundamental to software made familiar to all consumers by Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon. APIs could also offer turnkey access to population health data in a standard format, and interoperable approaches to exchange and aggregate data across sites of care.

HIT Newser: A Setback for MyMedicalRecords

Jan 12, 2015• 2

By MICHELLE RONAN NOTEBOOM

There’s No Place Like Epic’s Home

Epic reveals plans for a fifth campus, which is slated to include half a million square feet of office space and pay homage to literary classics like “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “The Wizard of Oz.”

A Setback for MyMedicalRecords

A US District Court rules against MyMedicalRecords in its patent case against Walgreens, Quest Diagnostics, and others. MyMedicalRecords, a company that many label a patent troll, contends its patents covered a method of providing online PHRs in a private, secure way. However, a judge ruled that “the concept of secure record access and management, in the context of personal health records or not, is an age-old idea,” and is therefore abstract.

Despite the setback, I doubt MyMedicalRecords will stop demanding organizations to pay up or risk facing a lawsuit. I predict they’ll make some tweaks to their business plan, such as focusing only on organizations with not-quite-so-deep pockets that are willing to settle without a fight.

What Has $564 million Bought Us?

Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Richard Burr (R-NC), and Mike Enzi (R-WY) ask the General Accounting Office to review the ONC-funded health information exchanges to determine what exactly the exchanges created with the government’s $564 million in grant money.

It’s a valid concern, given the significant number of providers and regions still lacking electronic exchange capabilities and the millions that have been spent.

Physicians Reject Stage 2 Attestation

Fifty-five percent of physicians say they won’t attest for Stage 2 MU in 2015, according to a SERMO survey of about 2,000 physicians. Respondents cite several reasons for not attesting including financial concerns, difficulty engaging older patients, and lack of software usability.

Given the lackluster Stage 2 attestation numbers so far, the findings are not particularly surprising. It will be interesting to see what CMS and ONC intend to do in the face of the overwhelming evidence that many providers simply don’t think it is worth the effort.

On To Stage 3

The Office of Management and Budget is currently reviewing the proposed Stage 3 MU rules and will likely publish them in February. CMS states that Stage 3 will include changes to the reporting period, timelines, and structure of the program, including a single definition of Meaningful Use. CMS also adds that “these changes will provide a flexible, yet clearer, framework to ensure future sustainability of the EHR program and reduce confusion from multiple stage requirements.”

Can’t wait to see what is included. And, I can’t help but be a little amused that it’s been six years since the passage of the HITECH legislation and we are just now getting a definition for “Meaningful Use.”

Show Me the Money

Allina Health and Health Catalyst sign a $100 million definitive agreement to combine technologies, clinical content, and front-line personnel.

Rush University Medical Center will implement Merge Healthcare’s cardiology PACS.

Healthcare operating system platform provider Par80 closes $10.5 million in Series A funding led by Atlas Ventures, Founder Collective, and CHV Capital.

Health analytics provider Apervita, formerly knowns as Pervasive Health, completes an $18 million Series A round of funding led by GE Ventures and Baird Capital.

Teledermatology provider PocketDerm raises $2.85 million from an undisclosed investor.

Caremerge, developers of a care coordination platform, raises $4 million in a second round of funding. Investors include Cambia Health Solutions, GE Ventures, Arsenal Health, and Ziegler-LinkAge Longevity Fund.

HIT Newser: Accenture Tapped to Continue Work on HealthCare.gov

Jan 4, 2015• 2

By MICHELLE RONAN NOTEBOOM

Accenture Tapped to Continue Work on HealthCare.gov

Accenture, the consulting firm that was hired a year ago to fix the troubled HealthCare.Gov insurance exchange, is awarded a five-year, $563 million to continue its work on the federal site. The government hired Accenture Federal Services to repair the online marketplace after dropping its original contractor, CGI Federal.

The long-term contract with Accenture also signals CMS’s acknowledgement that a task as large as HealthCare.Gov is best run with leadership from an experienced, private-sector vendor.

Connecticut HIE Dissolves After Wasting Millions

A former board member for The Health Information Technology Exchange of Connecticut blames management for the failure of the entity, which was tasked to create statewide HIE but dissolved by the legislature last summer. The HITE-CT “wasted” $4.3 million in federal grants over four years “without accomplishing anything,” according to Ellen Andrews, who served as the board’s consumer advocate. State auditors also found deficiencies in state controls, legal problems, and a “need for improvement in management practices and procedures.” The state’s legislature is now developing a new exchange strategy.

Prediction: look for more HIEs to falter this year due to mismanagement and lack of sustainability.

Electronic Prescribing of Controlled Substances on the Rise

Electronic prescribing of controlled substances (EPCS) increased from 1,535 to 52,423 between July 2012 and December 2013, according to a study published in the American Journal of Managed Care. The percentage of pharmacies enabled for EPCS jumped from 13% to 30% during the same period.

The next task: figuring out how to get more than the current one percent of physicians to participate.

ONC Shares Lessons Learned from State HIEs

An ONC report on state HIEs finds that many exchanges lack a critical mass of data and are struggling with data sharing. The case study also found that the technical approaches, services enabled, and use of policy and legislation varied across states; collaboration among HIE participants is critical for success; and states are leveraging a variety of policy and regulatory levers to advance interoperability and data exchange.

CMS Seeks ICD-10 Testers

CMS is seeking approximately 850 volunteers for ICD-10 end-to-end testing in April, according to a CMS bulletin. Volunteers have until January 9to submit applications to participate in the April 26-May 1, 2015 testing week.

Pediatrics Report Increased EHR Use

Seventy-nine percent of pediatricians reported using an EHR in 2012, compared to 58% in 2009, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics. Only eight percent of physicians say their EHRs include pediatric-specific functionality.

Modernizing Medicine Buys RCM Vendor Aesyntix

EMR developer Modernizing Medicine acquires Aesyntix, a provider of RCM, inventory management, and group purchasing services.

Presumably Modernizing Medicine was most interested in Aesyntix’s RCM component, which may create some concern among Modernizing Medicine’s current RCM partners, which include ADP/AdvancedMD, CareCloud, and Kareo.

Categories

Everything you always wanted to know about the Health Care system. But were afraid to ask.

Tag: HIE

How Not to Create an HIE

HIE Market Snippets

Lessons Learned from China

Separating Professional and Hospital Records

The Futility of Patient Matching

Hoarding Patient Data is a Lousy Business Strategy: 7 Reasons Why

Ensuring that the 21st Century Cures Act Health IT Provisions Promotes Interoperability and Data Exchange

HIT Newser: A Setback for MyMedicalRecords

HIT Newser: Accenture Tapped to Continue Work on HealthCare.gov

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