Healthcare IT News - May 2008 - (Page 16)

16 Healthcare IT News May 2008 ■ www.HealthcareITNews.com NEWSBRIEFS GEoRGIa SuppoRtS uptakE oF ElEctRoNIc hEalth REcoRdS The Georgia Department of Community Health has launched its new Georgia Medicare Electronic Health Records Community Partnership, designed to increase EHR uptake among small and medium-sized physician groups. During a five-year period the program will provide financial incentives to physician groups using certified EHRs to meet certain clinical quality measures. Georgia will pay physicians a bonus for each year they score on a standardized survey assessing EHR use to support the delivery of care. Physician survey gauges satisfaction with eHrs By RICHaRd PIzzI, Associate Editor vendors offering ambulatory electronic health record systems, how is a physician or a practice administrator supposed to determine which EHR is best for his or her practice? To help confused docs, Family Practice Management – a jourITh SO mANy W nal of the American Academy Family Practice Management, of Family Physicians – recently reported the results in the journal’s February 2008 edipublished the results tion. of a satisfaction survey “We tried very hard of physicians that use EHRs. Survey designnot to determine the best ers Kenneth Adler, MD, EHR, because that’s too medical director for IT complicated a question,” at Arizona Community said Edsall. “The best Physicians in Tucson, Robert Edsall EHR for a large practice and Robert Edsall, editor of is different than the best EHR for a small practice. A lot of personal preferences and situational factors enter into an assessment of an EHR. Nevertheless, we tried to present the data in the richest form we could, and I think the results can be useful for physicians.” In designing the survey, Adler and Edsall used a revised saTIsfy see page 18 Connecticut IPA provides EHR to all physicians By RICHaRd PIzzI, Associate Editor Pediatric network rolls out IT 200 clinicians at 75 sites have access to new EMR system. By Molly MeRRIll, Associate Editor BOSTON docS SEE dIGItal REcoRdS aS kEy to hEalthcaRE REFoRm A new survey shows that 46 percent of physicians believe that automating patient records is key to streamlining healthcare and driving reform. The survey, titled “Jackson & Coker’s 2008 Healthcare Professionals’ Opinions on Presidential Health Plans,” was e-mailed to thousands of health professionals across the country. The survey asked respondents their views on universal healthcare, the specific healthcare proposals touted by the presidential candidates and the best ways to implement changes to the healthcare system. N O RWA L K , C T - The Fairfield County Physician Management Corporation/ Norwalk IPA, an independent practice association in southwestern Connecticut, has implemented a suite of healthcare IT software at four pilot practices, with the ultimate goal of extending the technology to all its physicians. The IPA is partnering on this IT project with Norwalk Hospital. More at calIFoRNIa NEtWoRk oFFERS oNlINE phR to patIENtS Bright Health Physicians of PIH, a multisite network of primary care and specialty physicians in Whittier, Calif., plans to implement an administrative software package that will allow patients access to health management tools like a personal health record. Bright Health has inked a deal with HealthTrio LLC to use the Centennial, Colo.-based vendor’s HealthTrio xpress and HealthTrio connect products. The software will give patients access to an online PHR, and offer physicians an automatically populated electronic health record. HealthcareITNews.com e ●Connect: Norwalk 0508 - In what Girish Kumar Navani, CEO and co-founder of eClinicalWorks, calls a “pretty unique project” the Pediatrics Physicians’ Organization at Children’s Hospital Boston and eClinicalWorks are teaming up to develop a pediatric-specific disease registry reporting module that will gather information about chronic conditions affecting large populations. The chronic diseases monitoried by the system will include asthma, attention deficit hyper- The Pediatrics Physicians’ Organization at Children’s Hospital Boston is building a pediatric-specific disease registry reporting module into a new EMR system. active disorder, and obesity. In the future the organization plans to add additional conditions to the registry. The Pediatrics Physicians’ ambulatory surgery centers come up short on information technology By RICHaRd PIzzI, Associate Editor oREGoN clINIc adoptS ElEctRoNIc pREScRIBING Medford Medical Clinic, a primary care group practice in southwest Oregon, has deployed e-prescribing software. The technology is an upgrade to the clinic’s electronic medical record system. Medford Clinic chose e-prescribing technology from Portland, Ore.-based Kryptiq Corp. Timothy Krupp, director of IT at Medford Medical Clinic, said the practice implemented the technology to improve the overall access, speed and accuracy of its prescribing and refill processes. HealthcareITNews.com e ●Connect: PHYSICIaNS 0508 More at - According to an independent national survey of ambulatory surgery center administrators, 82 percent of ASCs do not use an electronic health record. The study, conducted by Renaissance Research of EDWARDSVILLE, IL Edwardsville, Ill., discovered that 85 percent of ASCs use paper perioperative notes, and 74 percent use dictation and transcription for the generation of physician procedure notes. Renaissance Research conducted the survey by telephone interviews between Feb. 29 and amBulatoRy SuRGERy cENtERS & EhRS ASCs that have an EHR (18%) ASCs that do NOT have an EHR (82%) (n=175) e ● Connect: GraPHS 0508 sOuRCE: nATIOnAL suRvEy Of AMBuLATORy suRGERy CEnTER ADMInIsTRATORs, 2008; REnAIssAnCE REsEARCH 82% 18% March 12. The firm interviewed 175 ASC administrators, providing a margin of error of plus or minus 7 percentage points. Wolters Kluwer Health, a Minneapolis-based provider of electronic procedure documentation and patient charting technology, commissioned the survey. Forty-three percent of the ASC administrators interviewed by Renaissance Research cited the following as obstacles to electronically streamlining procedure documentation: ■ lack of interface with scheduling software and other existing systems; ■ lack of capital investment; ■ lack of software that will capture their patient mix; ■ lack of personnel to asC see page 19 Organization at Children’s brings together pediatricians, pediatric medical groups and pediatric specialists to support the mission of the hospital and work with managed care organizations, HMOs, insurers and networking on behalf of its members and the hospital. The organization has developed and implemented disease management programs for pediatricians including asthma, ADD/ADHD, chronic ear infections and obesity. The organization is also implementing an electronic medical record and practice management system from eClinicalWorks across its 75 practices that include approximately 200 clinicians. The module will be incorporated into organization’s EMR system so that the data collected from individual practices can be used to understand care for these conditions, identify where large variations in care occur and target these areas for improvement, and to measure the effectiveness of such interventions says Gregory Young, MD, president and CEO of the PedIaTRIC see page 19 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=9170 http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=9171 http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=9164

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Healthcare IT News - May 2008

Healthcare IT News - May 2008 Contents Help Wanted Speeding Up Government Silos Privacy Pressures Tracking Disease Rah Rah Health! TriZetto Suit Outcomes Watch Ambulatory EHRs

Healthcare IT News - May 2008

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.