Healthcare IT News - July 2008 - (Page 27)

www.HealthcareITNews.com July 2008 ■ Healthcare IT News 27 NEWSBRIEFS ASSURANT HEALTH TO OFFER DOC CONSULTATIONS BY PHONE Assurant Health, a Milwaukee-based provider of health insurance products, will provide its customers with access to TeleDoc’s network of primary care physicians offering on-demand services over the telephone. TelaDoc Medical Services, which offers a platform in telehealth, will provide Assurant’s customers with a network of board-certified, licensed primary care physicians. Medicare pilot off to quick start CMS views early adoption rate as promising. WASHINGTON By PaTTy Enrado, Contributing Editor MICROSOFT, KAISER PARTNER ON PERSONAL HEALTH RECORDS Kaiser Permanente and Microsoft Corp. are launching a pilot project to bring Microsoft’s HealthVault platform together with Kaiser Permanente’s personal health records for use by Kaiser employees and their doctors. The partnership is expected to reveal new ways of caring for patients, said Jan Oldenburg, practice leader for the Internet services group at Kaiser. Kaiser Permanente has more than 2.2 million of its members actively using its personal health record called My Health Manager. Kaiser will now use Microsoft’s HealthVault platform to expand the capabilities of My Health Manager and will begin by testing it first on its employees this summer. – The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ pilot to encourage Medicare beneficiaries in South Carolina to use personal health records to communicate with their providers and track their healthcare services is only two months old, but more than 1,300 individuals are already using their PHRs. Lorraine Tunis Doo, senior policy advisor, Office of eHealth Standards and Services for CMS, said beneficiaries are logging in and entering and retrieving data. More than 600,000 beneficiaries can participate in the pilot, called MyPHRSC, according to Billy Quarles, spokesman for Palmetto GBA, a subsidiary of Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina. He noted that enrollment “continues to grow daily.” Lead contractor QSSI is managing the pilot and HealthTrio is the PHR application provider. Palmetto GBA, which is the source of Medicare fee-for-service claims for most South Carolina beneficiaries and maintains as laboratory and medication, and which sources need to feed the data, Tunis Doo said. CMS plans to conduct a survey and focus groups claims history in to find out what its data warehouse, aspects of elecwill extract data for tronic records are the PHRs. most useful to For electronic Lorraine Tunis Doo, senior tools to be useful in policy advisor, Office of e-Health beneficiaries. “This informaa 360-degree rela- Standards and Services for CMS tion will help us tionship between patient and physician, CMS in developing criteria and may needs to find out what other become a requirement for the data needs to be included, such PILoT see page 29 “This pilot is part of DEvELOPINg the future.” MEDICARE APPLICATION TO REDUCE PROCESSINg TIME Through a partnership with Government Works, a contractor with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, ikaSystems’ ikaMedicareGateway will offer payers a way to increase the accuracy of their Medicare application processing by providing them with real-time access to information from CMS’ MARx database. ikaMedicareGateway automates Medicare application processing, eligibility verification, and enrollment, membership and payment reconciliation. Using ikaMedicareGateway, users will be able to perform instant eligibility queries and beneficiary look-ups against the MARx database. INgENIx TO PROvIDE DATA REPOSITORY FOR WISCONSIN The Wisconsin Health Information Organization will launch a project to create a statewide repository of health claims data using Ingenix technology. The goal is to develop a comprehensive warehouse of data to produce meaningful public reports on the cost and quality of healthcare in Wisconsin. WHIO will report on the quality of care, measured against evidence-based treatment guidelines, enabling Wisconsin healthcare provider groups to benchmark their results against their peers. More at HealthcareITnews.com e Connect: PaYerS 0708 ● Maryland-based IT provider System overhaul CNSI began work on Michigan’s takes into account system overhaul in 2006. While continuous change. Michigan officials are refraining from comment until the project By PaTTy Enrado, Contributing Editor is complete, Dave McLaury, chief LANSING, MI – The Michigan Department of Community deputy director who is overseeing the project, said Health has launched the last year, “Our project third and biggest to date is going well.” release of its Community Rick Friedman, He a l t h A u t o m a t e d director of the Division Medicaid Processing of State Systems for the System, or CHAMPS. Centers for Medicare The release, which and Medicaid Services, is part of the depart- Vivek Gore ment’s ongoing Medicaid said the average lifespan of a Management Information Medicaid management inforSystem overhaul, makes it mation system is between eight possible for Medicaid provid- to 10 years, and at any time ers to enroll and update their between five to seven states are overhauling or upgrading their information. Thus far, the department has systems to accommodate policy counted nearly a thousand users changes and other requirements. logging into the application per “It’s a continual effort to change day, according to Vivek Gore, the wheels,” he said. Some states are making senior vice president of CNSI. More than 80,000 new and accommodations to their legacy existing providers are validating systems to “bring them up to and enrolling their information, speed,” which Friedman called and nearly 5,000 enrollments a “legacy-legacy” system. Other state systems are “quite advanced have been approved. Self-service is one of the key in what they’re doing,” he said. business drivers of management The management systems are being leveraged to integrate system overhauls, he said. With providers updating electronic health records and to their own information, the data share data via health informawill be more accurate, which in tion exchanges, he added. Friedman said Medicaid turn enables timely, accurate payments, Gore said. MICHIGan see page 29 Michigan Medicare IBH makes managing content easier with It goes for self-service Project highlights marketplace shift. with traditional content management solutions, cost per user is $500, he said. Integrated Behavioral Health By PaTTy Enrado, Contributing Editor (IBH), a managed care proCOSTA MESA, CA – Integrated Behavioral Health has imple- vider of mental health services, deployed BlueThread m e n t e d B l u eT h r e a d Technologies’ SmartDesk Technologies’ enterprise and K2 software to content management deliver a more accurate solution and K2 software and higher level of custo streamline workflow tomer service through and business processes. the scanning and indexThis implementation Ed Bosanac ing of all its documents, – one of a handful involving Microsoft partners’ applications said Ed Bosanac, Office of the using Microsoft Office SharePoint President, IBH. Case managers will be able to Server – signals a shift in the enterprise content management access charts electronically in market in the healthcare space, real time, eliminating delays and said Mark Brazeau, president of return calls. IBH will also eliminate more BlueThread Technologies. Instead of organizations spend- than 50 file cabinets of paper ing $5,000 to $6,000 per user IBH see page 28 Use of online health plan tools “Which if any of the following ONLINE tools have you ever used? Online physician or facility finder tool Online health plan selection tool Online drug comparison tool Online health risk assessment tool e ● Connect: GraPHS 0708 51% base: U.S. commercially insured, non-elderly consumers who have visited their health insurer’s Web site in the past 12 months. 32% 27% 24% SOURCe: 19TH AnnUAl 2008 HIMSS leADeRSHIP SURVeRy SPOnSOReD by CISCO - CIO FORReSTeR ReSeARCH InC. http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://HealthcareITnews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=9561

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Healthcare IT News - July 2008 Contents IT’s Financial Link eRx Power SOA Q&A Bent on Wireless Digital Switch IT Legacy Change Agent Panasonic 'Book' Taking a Shift Computer Types

Healthcare IT News - July 2008

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