Healthcare IT News - January 2008 - (Page 3) www.HealthcareITNews.com industry news January 2008 ■ Healthcare IT News industry By BerNIe MoNegaIN, Editor aLeXaNDRIa, Va news been at SureScripts from the start, have plenty of successes to celebrate. More than 35,000 prescribers electronically connected to more than 40,000 community pharmacies and generated more than 35 million electronic prescription transactions last year. Hutchinson and Ratliff expect the number of transactions will come close to tripling this year – with 100 million e-prescriptions forecast. Late last year SureScripts announced Alaska was the 50th state to come on board with electronic prescribing by removing legislative barriers to IT. Hutchinson has received kudos from many quarters regarding his work, among them Bruce Roberts, executive vice president and CEO of the National Community CUrTaIN see page 6 curtain up on act 2 for SureScripts Healthcare IT News posts original news stories on its Web site daily. Here are recent top stories, as selected by Healthcare IT News editors. Blue shield grants Boost healthcare it in california The Blue Shield of California Foundation has granted $6 million to nonprofits statewide. The funding supports the use of information technology to improve care and control costs and to expand access to care and coverage. The $6 million represents fourth quarter grants. The amount brings the total grants awarded in 2007 to $29.1 million. “As policymakers continue to debate healthcare reform, we are committed to shoring up the safety net that provides care for our state’s most needy residents and to improving the quality of care for all Californians,” said Crystal Hayling, foundation president and CEO. Date: 12/26/07 “electronic – SureScripts President and CEO Kevin prescribing Hutchinson describes himself would not be as someone who likes to build where it is things. At the end of this month, today without Hutchinson will step down from his role at SureScripts Kevin’s and move on to the next buildleadership ” ing project. – Bruce Roberts His colleague and co-builder, Community, the federal SureScripts Chief Operating panel that advises the Officer Rick Ratliff, will tackle Department of Health on the role of acting CEO and E-prescribing gained unprecedented and Human Services on begin the next building stage. healthcare IT issues, said “There’s a lot more work to traction in 2007. do in healthcare,” Hutchinson said. “There last month he was reviewing three or four are lots of things to do.” Hutchinson, who possible next steps for himself in healthcare. Hutchinson says he and Ratliff, who have serves on the American Health Information Knapp Medical center readies for it upgrade Knapp Medical Center, a 233-bed nonprofit hospital in Westlaco, Texas, is poised to automate its medical records and business systems. Knapp will implement technology developed by Atlanta-based McKesson Healthcare Solutions. Hospital officials have tapped Dallas-based PHNS Inc. to help with the rollout of McKesson Paragon, Horizon Patient Folder and Horizon Business Folder systems. Date: 12/26/07 DoD touts interoperability progress with Veterans affairs By BerNIe MoNegaIN, Editor WasHINGToN university of texas tracKs chronic disease in prisons The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston/Correctional Managed Care Division has partnered with an information technology vendor to improve the management of chronic disease in prison inmates. UTMB has signed a deal with Medical Development International (MDI) of Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., to use the latter’s ReClaim Suite Technology Platform to track chronic disease in prison populations. UTMB will employ information collected during claims processing to improve the tracking process. Date: 12/19/07 – The Department of Defense, which has been under pressure from lawmakers to establish a joint electronic medical record with the Department of Veterans Affairs, last month announced enhancements to its software that will do exactly that. “These enhancements demonstrate the unprecedented level of interoperabilty that DoD and VA have been able to achieve with our electronic health record systems, and they contribute significantly to patient safety and continuity of care,” said S.Ward Casscells, MD, assistant secretary of defense for Health Affairs. With the new enhancements in place, each agency is now able to view the other agency’s clinical encounters, medical procedures and lists of medical problems on shared patients using BHIE. BHIE refers to Bidirectional Health Information Exchange. This adds to the pharmacy, allergy, microbiology and chemistry/hematology data, as well as radiology reports that were made available earlier this year, DoD officials said. DoD providers are also able to view combat zone data. The CHDR (Clinical Data Repository/ Health Data Repository) software actively synchronizes data between DoD and VA repositories for patients who receive health services from both agencies. That synchronization significantly increases patient safety by enabling drug-drug and drugallergy interaction checks with data from the DoD, VA and retail pharmacies. CHDR has been operating on a limited basis, but new configuration enhancements have enabled all sites to view data on shared patients. The fiscal 2008 Defense appropriations bill, which President Bush signed into law in November, includes a provision requiring the DoD and VA to report to Congress this March on progress toward establishing a joint electronic medical record. By law, the DoD and VA are also required to develop and implement fully interoperable electronic health record systems by Sept. 30, 2009. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: DoD 0108 No banner year for IT By DIaNa MaNos, Senior Editor s ● Kaiser to study effect of eMrs on heart disease The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has awarded $600,000 to Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research for a study that uses electronic medical records to examine heart disease prevention and management. The two-year study will review medical records of 175,000 men and women at Kaiser Permanente’s Hawaii region to analyze how following care guidelines for cardiovascular disease prevention and management are connected to morbidity, mortality and costs of heart disease. The study’s initial findings will be released next summer. Date: 12/17/07 More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: WeBBrIeFS 0108 ONc works with public to define It terms By BerNIe MoNegaIN, Editor WasHINGToN ● – The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology scheduled the first of two public forums to gather input on defining key healthcare technology terms. The forum was set for Jan. 16 from 9 a.m. to noon at Washington Hospital, National Rehabilitation Center Auditorium here in the nation’s capital. The second forum will be scheduled in February at the annual conference of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society in Orlando, Fla. The public forums will play a vital role in the process of developing consensus-based definitions for electronic health record, electronic medical record, personal health record, health information exchange and regional health information networks, said ONC officials. Public forum participants will have the opportunity to review work in progress from the project’s two work groups and provide feedback. The forums offer the healthcare community and other thought leaders the opportunity to comment, share concerns and make contributions to the project. At the invitation of ONC, the National Alliance for Health Information Technology is helping with the definitions. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: DeFINe 0108 ome say you can’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’ ve been. This might seem a bit frightening if applied to this new year – if lack of progress in 2007 is any indication of the future. The Department of Health and Human Services made some progress by signing more than 800 employers to advance healthcare IT through President Bush’s plan for value-driven healthcare. But it also took some major hits, including sharp Congressional criticism of its progress to advance healthcare IT. In addition, lawmakers granted washington only $61.3 million of the president’s requested $118 million for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Late in 2007 HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt made a last ditch effort to shake things up when he urged Congress to include a requirement for doctors participating in Medicare to use healthcare IT. Though Leavitt said he felt members of Congress would back him, when the time came, no dice on that either. No healthcare IT bills were passed in 2007, and not many were introduced. Former Sen. John Breaux and former Rep. Nancy Johnson formed and cochair a new organization called Health IT Now!, which unfortunately didn’t achieve its goal of passing a healthcare IT bill in 2007. The smattering of bills introduced in 2007 still stuck in MaNos see page 4 Watch ● http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8398 http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8399 http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8400 http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8399 http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8401 http://HealthcareITNews.com http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8402 http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8401
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.