Healthcare IT News - August 2008 - (Page 6)

6 Healthcare iT News ■ August 2008 industry news www.HealthcareITNews.com points out that it’s like someone who has always lived with a paper calendar being asked to switch to a PDA – he or she won’t find any compelling reason to make the change from something that has worked for so long. The incentives spelled out in the new Medicare legislation should help, Little and Ratliff said. So should a more streamlined process for e-prescribing, which SureScripts-RxHub hopes to create through its merger. By combining the two organizations’ data sets, Little said they hope to create one “single payload” of information – including paid claim and dispensed pharmacy data – that can be pushed out to all segments of the healthcare chain, including ambulatory acute-care settings. While the network had been focused in the past on prescriber-to-pharmacy interactions, Ratliff pointed out, this merger will create a new level of interoperability, with the goal of getting providers into the mix. ■ More at HealthcareiTnews.com e Connect: epreScrIBe 0808 cBO: Federal help needed for hIt adoption WASHINGTON – Federal intervention will be needed if the United States hopes to advance nationwide healthcare IT adoption, according to Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag. At a House panel hearing last month, Orszag said allowing the free market to evolve into using electronic health records will be too slow. Testifying before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, Orszag said, “If the federal government chose to intervene directly to promote the use of health IT, it could do so by subsidizing that use or by requiring it.” He cautioned, however, that paying out bonuses for healthcare IT use would likely only reward the 10 percent or so of physicians. ■ More at HealthcareiTnews.com e Connect: cBo 0808 ePresCriBe Continued from page 5 ● passage of new Medicare legislation and an ongoing effort by the government to legislate e-prescribing of controlled substances “created the perfect storm” for the merger, Little said. Recent studies indicate only 2 percent of the estimated 1.5 billion annual prescriptions submitted to pharmacies are done electronically, and physician acceptance of eprescribing is no done deal. Little ● PHin Continued from page 3 network will not be led by large institutions, he added. “It’s you and me, in other words.” While it was Bush who called for an electronic medical record for every American by 2014, the whole effort at HHS (Health and Human Services) starting with the nation’s first healthcare IT coordinator David Brailer has been a failure, McNamar said. McNamar said efforts by the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel, of which he is a member, are falling short. John Halamka, MD, who heads the panel “is doing as good a job as anyone can do,” he said. “But people working to prevent change in their operating systems are prevailing. Volunteer fatigue is setting in big time.” “Bush’s fault, yes. Bill Clinton’s, no,” he said. He gave Clinton a pass, he said, because although he and HHS Secretary Donna Shalala tried to achieve interoperability, all they had to work with was XML, or extensible markup language. McNamar billed his keynote speech “RHIOs in 2014 or SaaS in 2009: Is It Possible?” as provocative. He told his audience that healthcare is surrounded by urban myths and legends and that providing interoperability is not as hard as some in the industry say it is. He promoted the use of SaaS, or Software as a Service as the key to getting the job done. He likened SaaS to a weather button many Internet users employ with ease. Google, too, is software as a service, he said. His own Washington D.C.-based company e-certus, inc. develops and implements eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), applications that make interoperability easier. “ T h e w ay t o g e t t h e r e i s to offer software as a service, McNamar said. “This is not a tough problem.” ■ More at HealthcareiTnews.com e Connect: pHIN 0808 ● Will consumers, through personal health records, or the government, via a nationwide network, lead the way on health data exchange? send your comments to editor Bernie Monegain at bernie.monegain@medtechpublishing.com. e ● Connect: poStScHeLL 0808 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://HealthcareiTnews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=9686 http://HealthcareiTnews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=9673 http://HealthcareiTnews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=9668

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Healthcare IT News - August 2008 Contents Closer to IT Bill PHIN or RHIOs? Making Leaps After the Flood Tidal Change Denmark Bound Bridging the Divide Robot That Could Mobile Computing Data Everywhere

Healthcare IT News - August 2008

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