Active Forum Topics | Getting Started | Interviews | EMR Forum | Medical | Billings | Press & News | Voice Recognition | The Water Cooler
http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2008/Bills/A4000/3934_I1.HTM
This democrat wants to make use of non certified EHRs illegal in NJ. And PMS's as well!
The bill provides specifically as follows:
"· On or after January 1, 2011, no person or entity is permitted to sell, offer for sale, give, furnish, or otherwise distribute to any person or entity in this State a health information technology product that has not been certified by CCHIT. A person or entity that violates this provision is liable to a civil penalty of not less than $1,000 for the first violation, not less than $2,500 for the second violation, and $5,000 for the third and each subsequent violation, to be collected pursuant to the "Penalty Enforcement Law of 1999," P.L.1999, c.274 (C.2A:58-10 et seq.).
· The bill defines "health information technology product" to mean a system, program, application, or other product that is based upon technology which is used to electronically collect, store, retrieve, and transfer clinical, administrative, and financial health information."
Graham http://www.synapse-ehr.com/ Synapse - the EMR for the superior physician
Check this one out:
" 5. (New section) a. The Director of the Division of Consumer Affairs in the Department of Law and Public Safety, in consultation with the Office for e-HIT in the Department of Banking and Insurance and the Commissioner of Health and Senior Services, shall require that, on or after a date to be determined by the Office for e-HIT and in accordance with requirements established by that office pursuant to and in furtherance of the purposes of subparagraph (a) of paragraph (1) of subsection b. of section 8 of P.L.2007, c.330 (C.17:1D-1), each health care professional who is licensed or otherwise authorized, pursuant to Title 45 or Title 52 of the Revised Statutes, to practice a health care profession that is regulated by a professional and occupational licensing board within the division or by the director, shall purchase, rent, lease, or otherwise acquire for use in that person’s professional practice only those health information technology products that have been certified by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology."
I'm glad that I don't live in NJ! On the other hand, there are no actual penalties in using a non-certified EMR, and of course, one can always go back to using paper. They want docs to take part in their statewide HIT program at all costs (to physicians, that is). They are taking advantage that docs can't unionize and collectively boycott the process. I wonder what their state medical society is doing? Probably nothing...
Al
Al Borges, M.D.
Do physicians put up with this type of government direction all the time? I am not sure many western governments would get away with even thinking of such directives.
Good find Graham. This is ridiculous if you ask me. I wrote up my thoughts in a blog post here.
John Lynn My EMR and HIPAA BlogMy New EMR and EHR Blog My EMR Selection e-Book
Yesterday a NJ user of Medtuity called to buy more credits. He told how his PMS company offered him a free CCHIT certified EMR if he would just drop Medtuity. So he tried the CCHIT-certified EMR and told us that it was a joke. He found it unusable and wondered how it could possibly be certified. Earlier in the week I wrote of a very large group practice with a CCHIT-certified EMR with a major problem- they could not document using the EMR. The demo must have gone well- we got a sale of a stripped down version of Medtuity to be used for documenting the encounter. The resulting note will be placed into the CCHIT-certified EMR.
Since when has CCHIT meant usability, efficiency, or even interoperability.
Regarding interoperability, we have a full bidirectional interface with LabCorp . A full bidirectional interface allows the practice to order virtually any lab from within the EMR, have the EMR send the lab electronically, print the requistion, fax the requistion, send a pdf copy of the requisition (as needed), print the label, and reconcile the result when returned electronically. As important, a full bidrectional fax interface should be part of the "EMR standard"-- it is the most common method of communicating among healthcare professions. Obviously, a user interface should be present for documenting an encounter note (something more than a keyboard or voice recognition). Add to that, a PMS-to-EMR and EMR-to-PMS standard, a standard group of documents types for import (rtf, tiff, pdf, jpg, txt at the least), several document types for export (fax, rtf, txt), the CCR (at least until the CCD becomes wider spread); RxNorm; among others.
Some politician received a hefty campaign contribution in NJ, but the CCHIT backers got to start somewhere and what better state is there? Maybe Rhode Island?
What if I told you that herb Conaway is a physician! I will try to contact his office next week.
The real crime that follows is the loss of freedom in this country. Laws on top of laws generating social engineering!
R Terry Ellis
DescriptMED, LLC
Get Done, Go Home!
Tour The Chart!
Has this been proven?
Taken from the bill....
" i. A prohibition on the sale or distribution in this State of HIT products that have not been certified by CCHIT will expedite the widespread use of CCHIT-certified products in New Jersey and thereby advance the public interest to be served by the development of an improved health care delivery system through the implementation of an effective, secure, and interoperable electronic health information infrastructure."
I will have our user call his representative and let him know that such a law will promote the use of unusable software, albeit "secure" unusable software, whatever that is.
Come to think of it, the most secure software is that which is never used.
And someone remind me of just how many CCHIT certified EMRs can interoperate with our bidirectional CCR interface. Oh, yes, CCR is not tested.
And could someone remind me of what part of the certification process guarantees an "effective" EMR......."effective", "efficient" and "effortless" sort of shares aliteration with "effluent".....if you catch my drift.
gchiu: The bill defines "health information technology product" to mean a system, program, application, or other product that is based upon technology which is used to electronically collect, store, retrieve, and transfer clinical, administrative, and financial health information."
The bill defines "health information technology product" to mean a system, program, application, or other product that is based upon technology which is used to electronically collect, store, retrieve, and transfer clinical, administrative, and financial health information."
Since CCHIT does not certify PMS or billing software, I guess the entire state of New Jersey will be forced to create and submit their medical claims (financial health information) on paper now, and since Medicare will only take electronic claims, they will have to either see Medicare patients for free or not at all.... Is there no end to stupidity?
Margalit Gur-Arie
My brand new Blog: On Healthcare Technology
Unfortunately there are many politicians that aren't very bright, and add some corruption, and you end up with such a bill.
In my state of Virginia we became famous with the $3500 traffic ticket. The Virginia legislature didn't want to pass any new taxes, so they thought that a law making driving over 20 mph over the speeding limit a felony and on top of that increase the fines to raise the needed money for new roads. Within a year you could see that the law had slowed traffic to a weird looking crawl and the jails were filled with 300000 who couldn't pay- a hugh "debtors prison".
Interestingly, the expected money came in a trickle, since folks started driving super-slow and thus it was difficult to actually make money with the law. One Virginian started a website to take on signatures and got eventually about half a million signatures from angry citizens. When the next fall elections came up, those Republicans involved were voted out of office. Even I, who had never in my life voted Democrat, voted for all Democratic delegates, including one guy called "Chap" whose only plank was the repeal of the law. I never looked back on that decision.
This NJ law has to be repealed, as it is poorly thought out and anti-American to the core. Physicians in NJ should contact their representatives and voice their opposition. Someone should begin gathering signatures from NJ docs who wish to have the freedom to buy the best HIT product for their offices, CCHIT or no CCHIT. Non-CCHIT certified vendors should begin gathering signatures and possibly even take a collection so as to get a lawyer to legally challenge the law.
Although this is a nonpartisan issue- heck Bush and Gingrich are as much pro-CCHIT as Obama, the NJ Republicans might take up the banner of "freedom" and back the repeal of the law. They are beginning to show well in NJ, BTW- Christie is hammering Corzine with 51% vs 38% support... check out http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_2009/new_jersey/election_2009_new_jersey_governor A PAC may need to be put together to lobby for this righteous cause.
I'll do my part by putting up an MDNG blog about this on Monday calling for everyone to make NJ a battleground for freedom for HIT in the USA. In the next MDNG magazine my next column will discuss the possibility of using VistA/WorldVistA as a free open source EMR that Congress should make available, along with free training, for use by physicians in the USA who don't want or can't afford to buy a c-EHR. WorldVistA is CCHIT certified for the 2006 criteria. Not sure if they will go for the 2009 certification so I guess VistA will be available only in the rest of the 49 states.
Which of you vendors wants to take up the banner to bring back SHOVEL?
alborg:This NJ law has to be repealed, as it is poorly thought out and anti-American to the core. Physicians in NJ should contact their representatives and voice their opposition. Someone should begin gathering signatures from NJ docs who wish to have the freedom to buy the best HIT product for their offices, CCHIT or no CCHIT. Non-CCHIT certified vendors should begin gathering signatures and possibly even take a collection so as to get a lawyer to legally challenge the law.
I was under the impression it was a bill that was being introduced .. and not voted on yet.
Is it actually in law there now??
Typo- You're right, it was just introduced, but not voted on yet.
Some data on all of this:
About the main sponsor of the bill-
ü in 2008: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/ethics/FinancialDisclosure/ConawayH2008.pdf ü in 2007: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/ethics/FinancialDisclosure/ConawayH2007.pdf ü in 2006: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/ethics/FinancialDisclosure/ConawayH2006.pdf ü in 2005: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/ethics/FinancialDisclosure/ConawayH2005.pdf
ü in 2008: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/ethics/FinancialDisclosure/ConawayH2008.pdf
ü in 2007: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/ethics/FinancialDisclosure/ConawayH2007.pdf
ü in 2006: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/ethics/FinancialDisclosure/ConawayH2006.pdf
ü in 2005: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/ethics/FinancialDisclosure/ConawayH2005.pdf
That's it so far... I'm going to see if MDNG magazine will set up an interview with this guy. I'll eat him alive, politely of course.
This is typical of New Jersey and not surprising at all. Expect similar trends from the Feds, we are moving in a socialist direction at a rapid rate.
While I never practiced in Jersey, I was licensed there at one time. About 5 years ago, some legislature mandated that physicians had to take 16 hours of cultural sensitivity training per year. It was at that point that I inactivated my license and decided I would never practice in that state.
They also tax outpatient services... last I heard it was 2%.
We all have an opportunity to help guide the direction of our governement when it comes time to vote. Many physicians do not exercise that opportunity.
Just because you are not interested in poltics, does not mean that politics is not interested in you.
Absolutely typical of NJ, a state which borders on the ridiculous in multiple ways. NJ is screwed up in so many ways it is almost impossible to keep track of anymore. Over regulated, over taxed, government completely out of touch with reality, etc. It is the most antibusiness state in the country, especially for small business. Not only does this not surprise me, it is unfortunately just another straw on the pile.
I grew up in NJ, and did a large part of my education and post graduate training there, and as much as I like many areas of the state I would not live there again ever. NJ is rapidly becoming a state where only the super rich or the poor will live. The middle class is being forced out and is leaving in droves. In the last 3 years NJ lost 25,000 private sector jobs yet gained almost 30,000 government jobs. That is an equation that doesn't add up to anything good.
Regards,RoyF