Healthcare IT News - August 2007 - (Page 19)

www.HealthcareITNews.com PHySICIAN PRACTICES & AmBULATORy CARE August 2007 ■ Healthcare IT News 19 Health Associates want to use various solutions to provide value, and software vendors must create flexible products to address their needs. “We’re really agnostic in regard to technology and we will promote best of breed technologies that our clients can benefit from,” Heyman said. “We think you should support all technologies in an environment that can scale.” More at PqRI Continued from page 18 CHa Continued from page 18 EHR at Chicago-based Allscripts. She says that vendors have to be attentive to these concerns when building EHRs. “You need to make sure that the documentation process fits within a physician’s normal workflow,” Bordeaux said. She added that many physicians currently shopping for an EHR system will ask whether the system allows them to submit data for P4P projects. “For some physicians, it’s just as important as whether a product is CCHIT certified,” she said. For small physician practices, quality reporting can be a challenge, even if they have an EHR that captures PQRI data elements. “Pay for performance can be a revenue generator for doctors, but the underlying issues of time and money are always there,” said Nick Ulmer, MD, co-founder of the Family Healthcare Center in Clinton, Nick Ulmer S.C. “The process has to be easy if it’s going to be worth our time to collect and report.” Ulmer speaks positively about his experience submitting PQRI data, but he suspects that pay-forperformance will not appeal to as many physicians as CMS hopes. At least not yet. “I don’t see people beating down the door to report quality measures,” Ulmer said. “For many of us it’s too painful to jump into the 1.5 percent bonus world. This process needs to be made seamless, a ‘oneclick’ effort, if doctors are going to do it.” “Quality reporting will catch on if the dollars are there in early 2008, but if doctors lose time and money getting ‘bonuses,’ this could fall flat on its face,” he added. ■ More at arrived embedded on the Wyse thin clients, and Cox says the server-based software helped CHA centralize the management and administration of the multiple applications accessed by the practice’s 700 users. “When our end users log into their thin client, they are presented with an interface that feels like a locally-hosted application,” said Cox. “Most of the environment can be implemented on a single Windows server, and the scalability is wonderful.” Like many physician practices, the IT environment at Children’s Health was predominantly desktop-based. The practice now centralizes its applications on a Windows Terminal Server 2003 and runs legacy applications on SCO UNIX and IBM UNIX from the Wyse thin clients and legacy PCs. Users access the applications via the PowerTerm WebConnect portal. Cox says that moving away from a desktop environment saves a great deal of time and resources. CHA chose Linux architecture for reliability and cost ratio, and Cox also notes that licensing costs have been reduced 60 percent compared to a Windows-based portal solution. Eran Heyman, the CEO and founder of Ericom, said healthcare providers like Children’s HealthcareITNews.com e ●Connect: CHa 0807 HealthcareITNews.com e ●Connect: PqrI 0807 aaFP Continued from page 18 universal appeal dealt with managing basic patient data, such as problems, medications and allergies, and with improving efficiency and documentation in the practice. Ninety-nine percent of respondents in the process of implementing an EHR – and 99 percent of those planning to purchase one – said they were interested in using an EHR to manage patient medication lists, manage patient problem lists and display summaries. Sixty percent of those respondents said they would use an e-mail or secure messaging feature in an EHR, and 49 percent indicated an interest in using an EHR for practice-based research, according to AAFP. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e ●Connect: aafP 0807 e ● Connect: tSYSteMS 0807 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=7517 http://www.tsystem.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=7515 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/eConnect.cms?id=7563 http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=7518 http://www.tsystem.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Healthcare IT News - August 2007

Contents AHIC Redux IT Saving Lives IT, Wal-Mart Style OR Workflow Counting on Quality PHR Position Tapping Talent Slimming Down E-Prescribing Claims Processing

Healthcare IT News - August 2007

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