Healthcare IT News - October 2008 - (Page 59)

58 Healthcare IT News October 2008 ■ P4P seen as pushing physicians to automation Small practices lag, but electronic initiatives making headway. By John Andrews, Contributing Editor he physician practice sector needs to step up its adoption of interactive automated systems if industry-wide healthcare initiatives like pay-for-performance and electronic health records are to make any substantial headway, IT specialists say. Small practices in particular are being prodded to get on board the connectivity train, either through hospital underwriting, health information exchanges or physician cooperatives. The primary hurdle for IT adoption in small physician practices continues to be funding, along with resistance due to perceived disruption, reluctance toward culture change and skepticism over return on investment. “Many physicians will say there needs to be an upside for them and it has to be big enough for them to adopt,” said Michele Mann, partner with Falls Church, Va.based CSC’s global healthcare sector. “They have to be shown that automation is easy and beneficial and documented on a large scale.” Ideally, a contemporary automated practice system should have clinical information tied to billing and scheduling, then integrated into a common database, said Walter Zywiak, principal researcher for CSC’s management solutions www.HealthcareITNews.com t its initial challenges in 2004, but that once things got up and running, it improved the entire organization. “While it was rough going at first, it is running smoothly now,” she said. “The trick was to roll it out quickly. The doctors were used to dictating and weren’t used to reporting (at the point of care). It took some time to learn new procedures, but they’d never go back now. Patient care has improved – they can see it.” The Northeast Physician Hospital Organization in Beverly, Mass., reports suc- “many physicians will say there needs to be an upside for them and it has to be big enough for them to adopt.” – Michele Mann cess on a larger scale in developing an EHR system with Beverly Hospital. Since deploying the GE Centricity system in 2005, approximately three-quarters of the organization’s 300 physicians have hooked up to the system. NEPHO is a consortium of practices in the state of Massachusetts, many of which have fewer than five physicians, said Todd Lowthers, manager of physician services. Still, Lowthers also acknowledges that the project had moments of difficulty. “We have worked really hard over the past few years as people struggled with interfacing disparate systems,” he said. “It took years to get through the hurdles, but now we’re pulling data and registries off that data point. Take diabetes, for instance. We can get an instant snapshot that tells us everything about the diabetic patient. These types of tools make practices much more efficient.” Funding remains a primary barrier to automating small medical practices, industry analysts say. Practices that have automated reap the benefits, but it takes time, say practice administrators. emerging practices group. “This should allow the physician to administer better care while capturing the data that is billable so they can get paid for the services that are covered,” he said. In assessing the state of practice automation and the reasons why it hasn’t been widespread, the prevailing attitude behind the cost objections seems to be that the systems are viewed as a “nice to have” luxury rather than a “need to have” necessity. But as initiatives like P4P gain momentum, physicians must face the reality that these systems are indeed critical to their financial future, said Lora Baker, quality measures project coordinator for Horsham, Pa.-based NextGen Healthcare Information Systems. “P4P is the new reimbursement model and it will evolve even more over the next five years,” she said. “CMS maintains that P4P will grow to represent about 30 percent of physician reimbursement over the next two years. National initiatives like PQRI (Physician Quality Reporting Initiative) have already started, with the first phase coming in the second half of 2007, and physicians are just now receiving payments on that. With 175 measures being scheduled for 2009, I don’t know how physicians can participate without being automated.” ahead of the pack Despite the continued reluctance of many, the fortitude of a few is helping blaze the practice automation trail. And those who have completed the transformation attest that the end results are worth the effort. Informatics specialist Tracy Crowe, manager of Frankfort, Ky.-based Capital Medical Group’s cardiology department, concedes that the NextGen EMR system rollout at the 24-physician multi-specialty clinic had Bridging the gap Besides the funding and fear-of-change issues, practices also face a lack-of-compatibility situation between their parochial administrative systems and connectivity with a virtual provider continuum. Michael Nissenbaum, CEO of Carrollton, Texasbased iMedica understands the dilemma and offers an “intermediate step” system to get practices started. PM (Practice Management) Plus offers a series of functions that have been previously unavailable in a system of this kind, he said, such as e-prescribing (and 2 percent Medicare reimbursement), lab orders, PQRI, health maintenance reminders, electronic notes and electronic billing. “It is for practices that want the economic benefits of automation but who are still leery about behavior-changing methodologies,” he said. “You can put the system in now and if you want to migrate to EHRs in June, you can.” community connection Nashville, Tenn.-based Informatics Corp. of America aggregates provider systems on a community level and doesn’t deal with practices individually, but CEO Gary Zegiestowsky offers some advice on how practices should approach the community-based health information exchange concept: “You have to get a core consensus on how the information is best used,” he said. “That has been a challenge in every one of these. You need to see what value it has in the scheme of things and ensure that it doesn’t have a negative impact on revenue.” ■ More at healthcareITnews.com e Connect: autoMatioN 1008 ● e ● Connect: laserficHe 1008 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=10122 http://jobspot.healthcareitnews.com http://jobspot.healthcareitnews.com http://jobspot.healthcareitnews.com http://www.medtechpublishing.com http://www.medtechpublishing.com

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Healthcare IT News - October 2008 Contents Seattle's Slate Board 2.0 MGMA Newsmaker IT Battles Infection Beyond Adoption Excellence in Maine Carrot and Stick HP Layoffs Mobile Workstations Automating Offices

Healthcare IT News - October 2008

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