This is the first newsletter of the emrupdate.com website. I hope I’ve skimmed through the most importants news events both worldwide and at emrupdate.com. Enjoy.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Dr. David Brailer, the country’s National Coordinator for Health IT, announced his resignation last week. Dr. Brailer has held the newly created position for the past two years and plans on stepping down on 5/19/2006. In the interim the Office of the National Coordinator will be led by its four permanent directors. Dr. Brailer will continue as a consultant to HHS until his replacement is found. He will continue to serve as Vice Chair of the American Health Information Community.
Dr. Brailer help bring about significant progress on developing standards and promoting interoperability among various healthcare IT initiatives. According to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt: "Over the past two years, David has made significant progress in advancing the President's health IT agenda and laying the building blocks for future progress,"
This article discusses the plight of Dr. Normille in establishing an electronic health record system in his office. Problems encountered included:
- He is not communicating with patients electronically, but in the future when he does, this will be another expense to absorb as this form of communication will not be reimbursed by insurance even if this electronic consultation with the patient is done in lieu of an office visit.
- The cost of implementing an EHR system in the practice cost $50,000 and additional annual maintenance costs including software upgrades can cost up to $10,000.
- He spends more time at the office because data still needs to be entered into the charts.
- When the system was being installed, the number of patients had to be reduced during the time the office was learning to use the system.
It also discusses the presentation on how BJC Healthcare, one of the largest nonprofit healthcare organizations in the U.S located in St. Louis Missouri, is installing electronic health records in the BJC Medical Group network of employed physicians at a cost of $8 million dollars to achieve this goal in a timespan of 2 years. They plan to accelerate the adoption of EHRs by underwriting the one time implementation costs if physicians buy the needed equipment. This equipment, including scanners and printers, averages $10,000 per provider; however, the return on investment can be achieved over 2 to 3 years.
URL: http://www.federaltelemedicine.com/042406-05.html
This is an excellent article that discusses how EHR projects in other countries may provide a roadmap for initiatives here at home. It’s a must-read, especially the part about the 10 lessons learned:
- Lesson #1. Promote fundamental change industry wide. \
- Lesson #2. Engage physicians and clinicians to participate and contribute their expertise.
- Lesson #3. Include the vendor community.
- Lesson #4. Adopt standards for interoperability- make this a “top priority”.
- Lesson #5. Build a critical mass of users® whatever the solution, its success depends on having a critical mass of users.
- Lesson #6. Address privacy and security.
- Lesson #7. Communicate, keep EHR stakeholders informed to address the inherent intense scrutiny and politicization.
- Lesson #8. Customize strategies. There is tremendous variability in the use of health information technology within countries, across regions and political jurisdictions, and among sectors (e.g., acute versus ambulatory). Because no one size fits all, national EHR programs must customize strategies for investment and deployment. [How CCHIT goes against this lesson is a matter of discussion.]
- Lesson #9. Money matters. How can we ensure that every clinician's office has a computer and an Internet connection?
- Lesson #10. People count. We need to understand how people behave and what they believe as individuals and as members of groups.
ULR: http://www.healthcare-informatics.com/issues/2006/04/48/
New York City’s Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Commissioner Thomas R. Frieden recently announced that NYC has earmarked $27 million to provide electronic health records (EHR) systems to 1,000 of the city’s physicians by 2008. An additional $13 million will be contributed by community health centers participating in the program. The city expects that the EHRs will provide the DOH with more accurate and faster information on emerging pubic health problems and also improve care at community health clinics.
URL: http://www.medicalinformaticsinsider.com/2006/05/02/nyc-docs-will-get-ehrs/
UnitedHealth Group, a group of national health care companies, and Quicken plan to produce a series of healthcare software to help consumers manage their health care use. the software would allow customers to view and organize payments and medical records from physicians and hospitals in one system. The products are scheduled for a 2007 release, although the plans are in preliminary phases.
URL: http://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/stories/2006/04/10/daily33.html?from_rss=1
Remember that TERP 2006 will be held in Baltimore, MD on Saturday, 05/20/06 8:00 AM thru Wednesday, 05/24/06 6:00 PM. For fee schedule, event schedule, and for other miscellaneous information go to the Medical Records Institute website at: http://www.medrecinst.com/iebms/reg/reg_p1_form.aspx?oc=10&ct=TEPR06&eventid=5137.
- Today there are now 4,468 users who have contributed to 8,807 threads and 49,136 posts. In the past month 140 new users have joined us. Nick's promising more statistics next month.
- On April 25, 2006 Dr. David Winn, one of our most favorite and boisterous posters at emrupdate.com posted a farewell to all of us after some health concerns. We all wish him the best and hope that he achieves a quick recovery and comes back to share with us his achievements and life both as a physician and as CEO of e-MDs.
- On April 29, 2006 Robert Gleeman, Marketing Consultant for DoctorsPartner EMR/PMS Integrated Software System and Moderator/President at emrupdate.com debuted as the consummate reporter, beginning the new “EMR Interview Forum”, a process whereby he will interview physician EMR users to see how they have implemented IT into their offices. His first interview was titled “An interview with Dr Thomas Rohrick ('Dragon' Meets S.O.A.P.)” is certainly a great read. Well done Robert.
- Many new changes have been made by Nick on emrupdate.com during this past month, including:
- Addition of several new forum folders, including “New Software (Forum)”, “New Software (Catalog)”, and “EMR interviews”.
- The “Front Page News” has been changed to “News…”
- Other minor changes.
- CCHIT continues to take the limelight with numerous recent threads, including-
- On 4/26/2006 we reported the addition of 2 new sponsors making the list sponsors of emrupdate.com a total of 11. Some of our sponsors are up for renewal last month; they haven't responded yet, so we may be losing a few of these. The current sponsor list now includes:
There have been also many private sponsors, the list which can be found here /about/supportus.aspx. If you would like to become a sponsor, visit this URL. Thanks! Also you may wish to visit the various sections of the new website, including the:
- Files- for download of presentations, softwares, and other freebies.
- Photos- for interesting personal photographs of various posters.
- Blogs- for interesting themed discussions of EMR topics.
- Jobs- for great job opportunities.
- Community Forum Jokes- please add your pictures and stories to cheer us all up a bit.
Well, that’s it! Many thanks to Nick for his efforts on making this site run smoothly. If any readers have any interesting comments, suggestions, or news stories, send a private email to Nick Harrington or alborg (or regular email alborgmd@yahoo.com). I plan to make these newsletters updated either periodically throughout the year, or at least on a monthly basis. If you read a thread which you think needs the spotlight of our front-page, please let us know.
Cheers,
Al Borges MD
Posted
May 03 2006, 12:13 PM
by
Nick Harrington