To Read the Full Article Click Here:
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/blog/defining-moment-meaningful-use

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued its draft definition for the “meaningful use” of electronic health records (EHRs) Dec. 30 as part of its notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM).  The NPRM describes the proposed implementation of incentives to providers for the adoption and meaningful use of certified EHRs.  This NPRM from CMS kicks off a 60-day public comment period to help inform its development of the final 2011 meaningful use criteria.

Closely linked and also issued today from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is an interim final rule (IFR) on Standards & Certification Criteria.  The IFR provides details on requirements for “certified” EHR systems, and what technical specifications are needed to support secure, interoperable, nationwide electronic exchange and meaningful use of health information.  The standards and certification criteria in the IFR are specifically designed to support the 2011 meaningful use criteria.

As part of the rulemaking process, the Standards & Certification Criteria IFR will go into effect 30 days after publication.  There will be an opportunity for public comment for 60 days from publication, after which the rule will be finalized.

There have been a number of opportunities for stakeholders to weigh in as meaningful use criteria and the standards and certification criteria have evolved.  These rulemaking processes attempt to take into account the input to date.  The resulting language in both the NPRM and the IFR should therefore seem familiar to many of you.  But the public now has another opportunity to offer useful suggestions before they are finalized.

Of course, meaningful use as defined for 2011 and the standards and certification criteria to support it are but the first major steps in a continuing process.  These criteria will set a level of expectation for what can be achieved today and in the near future through the adoption and use of a certified EHR system.  We fully expect that, over time, as needs and technologies evolve, the expectations can evolve as well.  We will learn, and the use and value of EHRs in medical practice will continue to improve.  That’s one benefit of the kind of learning health care system we can enable through the appropriate use of health information exchange.

Our next steps begin with you.  Your input on the draft meaningful use definition and standards and certification criteria during these open public comment periods is essential to informing the final regulations due to be published in spring 2010.  There is a formal process for submitting your comments available at:

• Click here to submit comments on the Meaningful Use NPRM during the 60-day comment period
• Click here to submit comments on the Standards & Certification Criteria IFR during the 60-day comment period

All submissions will be considered and a compilation of this input will be posted to http://www.regulations.gov.

Your perspectives are important as we all play a different role in the delivery of care.  Whether you are a provider, technologist, administrator, caregiver, researcher, patient, consumer, or other member of the health care community, your input is valuable as we all work together to provide patient-centered, quality health care.

We also hope you will use this blog to start a dialogue about meaningful use, and how we can leverage this important concept, and the specific incentives, to strengthen patient care.

–By David Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.P. – National Coordinator for Health Information Technology

David Blumenthal, MD, blogs regularly at Health IT Buzz.

Uncategorized CCHIT, emr, HITECH, meaningful use, mitochon, Mitochonsystems.com

WASHINGTON – The government delivered on Wednesday the long-awaited definition of meaningful use of electronic health record technology, and it came wrapped in about 700 pages of proposed regulation.

The ability to exchange health data among providers, security of that data, standard formats for clinical summaries and prescriptions and standard terms to describe clinical problems, procedures and tests are part of the package.

A proposed rule issued by CMS outlines proposed provisions governing the EHR incentive programs, including defining the central concept of “meaningful use” of EHR technology. An interim final regulation (IFR) issued by ONC sets initial standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria for EHR technology.  Both regulations are open to public comment.

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/cms-onc-deliver-meaningful-use-package

Uncategorized ARRA Funding, CCHIT, emr, meaningful use, Mitochonsystems.com

High priced EMR systems can be tough on the finaces of a public clinics: http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/cms-onc-deliver-meaningful-use-package

Uncategorized emr, meaningful use

A must read for people interested in Google Health…

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/04/google-health-now-lets-you-share-your-medical-history-with-loved-ones/

Uncategorized

Obama’s speech highlights digitized health care records as key part of turning around embattled US economy.  This falls right in line with the overall mission of Mitochon Systems (www.mitochonsystems.com).

http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/12/technology/stimulus_health_care/index.htm?postversion=2009011204

President-elect wants to computerize the nation’s health care records in five years. But the plan comes with a hefty price tag, and specialized labor is scarce.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — President-elect Barack Obama, as part of the effort to revive the economy, has proposed a massive effort to modernize health care by making all health records standardized and electronic.

Here’s the audacious plan: Computerize all health records within five years. The quality of health care for all Americans gets a big boost, and costs decline.

Sounds good. But it won’t be easy.

In fact, many hurdles stand in the way. Only about 8% of the nation’s 5,000 hospitals and 17% of its 800,000 physicians currently use the kind of common computerized record-keeping systems that Obama envisions for the whole nation. And some experts say that serious concerns about patient privacy must be addressed first. Finally, the country suffers a dearth of skilled workers necessary to build and implement the necessary technology.

“The hard part of this is that we can’t just drop a computer on every doctor’s desk,” said Dr. David Brailer, former National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, who served as President Bush’s health information czar from 2004 to 2006. “Getting electronic records up and running is a very technical task.”

It also won’t come cheap. Independent studies from Harvard, RAND and the Commonwealth Fund have shown that such a plan could cost at least $75 billion to $100 billion over the ten years they think the hospitals would need to implement program.

That’s a huge amount of money — since the total cost of the stimulus plan is estimated to cost about $800 billion, the health care initiative would be one of the priciest parts to the plan.

The biggest cost will be paying and training the labor force needed to create the network. Luis Castillo, senior vice president of Siemens Healthcare, a company that designs health care technology, said the laborers will have the extremely difficult task of designing a a system that “thinks like a physician.”

“Doctors cannot spend hours and hours learning a new system,” said Castillo. “It needs to be a ubiquitous, ‘anytime, anywhere’ solution that has easily accessible data in a simple-to-use Web-based application.”

But highly skilled health information technology professionals are as rare as they come, and many IT workers will need to be trained as health technology experts.

Early government estimates showed about 212,000 jobs could be created from this program, but Brailer said there simply aren’t that many Americans who are qualified.

Furthermore, ensuring the privacy of patients’ records in a nationalized computer network will be tricky. There are obvious concerns about hackers and system failures. And new online health record systems, such as Google Health are not currently subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the national health privacy law.

“HIPAA was never intended for the digital age, because the laws never anticipated the emergence of Web-based records,” said Brailer. “Congress can pass one of numerous policy proposals for change, it’s just a question if they have the will to do that.”

The Obama transition operation declined a request to elaborate on Obama’s proposal. The president-elect said Thursday in a speech on the economy that the benefits of a modernized national health record system go beyond just cost savings.

“This will cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests,” said Obama. “It just won’t save billions of dollars and thousands of jobs — it will save lives by reducing the deadly but preventable medical errors that pervade our health care system,” he added.

Still, compared to the $2 trillion a year that the industry spends, the $100 billion experts say it may cost to implement Obama’s plan is a drop in the bucket.

“We must reduce waste to become more efficient” said Brailer.

The savings of such a plan could be substantial. Brailer estimates that a fully computerized health record system could save the industry $200 billion to $300 billion a year.

That could ultimately slow the rapid rise of health care premiums, which have cut into Americans’ paychecks. While wages are rising at a rate of around 3% a year, health care costs are growing at about three times that rate.

“Obama’s support for electronic medical records is one of the key efforts of health reform that actually will deliver lower costs for hard-working American families,” said Larry McNeely, a health care advocate at U.S. Public Interest Research Group. “Long-term savings can’t happen unless we have 21st century health information technology.”

Massachusetts has developed a plan to fully computerize records at its 14,000 physicians’ offices by 2012 and its 63 hospitals by 2014. After a pilot program, the state legislature estimates it will cost about $340 million to build the statewide computer system, with a cost of about $2 million per hospital.

“[Obama's] timeframe is very ambitious, but there is a need to be able to track data on patients and talk across providers and health care systems,” said Dr. JudyAnn Bigby, Secretary of Health and Human Services for Massachusetts. “The program will allow for greater patient safety.”

Some say some of the hard work has begun. The Bush administration laid much of the groundwork for the program, leading to several pilot programs in a handful of states, as well as a standardization of medical records.

“The whole structure has already been developed,” said Stephen Schoenbaum, executive director of The Commonwealth Fund’s commission on a high performance health system. “It’s feasible to at least make a lot of progress on this in the next five years.” 

Uncategorized allscripts, digitized healthcare records, electronic medical record, emr, medical, mitochon, practice fusion, practice fusion (www.practicefusion.com), practice management

Welcome to the Mitochon Systems (mitochonsystems.com) blog. We have established this blog to cover various healthcare/medical industry related issues with the goal to discuss, debate and disseminate.

Mitochon Systems connects physicians, patients, and hospitals into a Virtual Medical Community (VMC) that provides a secure platform for the exchange of healthcare information. Mitochon seeks to empower physicians, patients and hospitals to make the most accurate, efficient, and cost effective healthcare decisions. Through the deployment of the company’s mConnect and mEMR products, Mitochon on the path to creating a Virtual Medical Community.

Thank you for checking in on our blog!

Uncategorized allscripts, electronic medical record, emr, medical, mitochon, practice fusion, practice fusion (www.practicefusion.com), practice management