Earlier this year, the ONC released the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA), which responds to a mandate included in 2016’s 21st Century Cures Act and lays out principles, terms and conditions on which to base an interoperability framework that healthcare organizations can embrace. “This means patients who have received care from multiple doctors and hospitals should have their medical history electronically accessible on demand by any other treating provider in a network
Read More
Is Specialization a Contributing Factor to Deteriorating Mental Health Care?
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." - Robert A. HeinleinIn almost every walk of life, we worship at the altar of specific expertise. It
Read More
4 Ways Hospitals Should Approach Buying Healthcare IT Systems Today
I’m proud to lead a group of intelligent and energetic technology professionals committed to developing a robust healthcare IT system that is (1) easy for clinicians to use, (2) improves patient health and (3) doesn’t bankrupt hospital budgets. We think any sustainable system must have those three key requirements.And how is healthcare doing thus far?The EHRs available today are developing rapidly. Vendors are making frequent and impactful improvements to improve system usability. Clinicians are
Read More
Why The VA Should Stick with VistA EHR
At the end of last month, President Trump dismissed VA Secretary David Shulkin, MD, following weeks of speculation that he would do just that. In Shulkin’s place, Trump nominated his personal White House physician, Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, a physician who’s never managed a large healthcare organization.Shulkin’s dismissal left unsigned the contract with Cerner to replace the VA’s venerable VistA healthcare IT platform. It’s not that the Cerner deal is really threatened without Shulkin—VA
Read More
Can A Moneyball Approach Bring Change to Evidence-based Medicine?
In the early 2000s, in preparation to write his bestseller, Moneyball, author Michael Lewis was trying to figure out how the Oakland Athletics could possibly be successful. A small-market team hemmed in by financial limitations, the A’s were regularly competitive even though their budget was dwarfed by that of teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees.“… part of the answer was, the experts in judging baseball talent—the baseball scouts—made a lot of mistakes,” Lewis explained. The
Read More
Healthcare Blockchain: How Does It Fit With Health IT?
With the end of the year rapidly approaching, it’s about time for articles making technology predictions for 2018 and proclaiming 2017 “the year of the (this space for rent).”As editors cast about for the healthcare IT story of the current year, they might have a hard time making the case for healthcare blockchain technology based on measurable recent impact, but they’ll have less trouble endorsing blockchain if they look at current hype and future potential.“Blockchain technology is a
Read More
Health IT Interoperability Standards are Essential, Someone Has to Create Them
It’s not exactly a sweater or tie that gets worn once and then relegated to the top of the closet, but it turns out that patient data may have something in common with unloved holiday gifts. Both, it appears, are shared and then seldom used.At least that’s one takeaway from a recent Health Affairs study on interoperability and how far forward we’ve actually moved the ball. The authors used the most recent available data (2015) and the four interoperability standards established by the Office of
Read More
How Recent Hurricanes Highlights Health IT Improvement & Exposes Gaps
Yes, Katrina was already losing appeal as a girl’s name by 2005, when it had fallen to 247th most popular in the United States. But the so-named hurricane that swamped New Orleans in August of that year pushed it off a ledge. By May of 2007 Katrina had fallen more than 100 spots to number 382, its lowest level since the 1950s.Less trivial is the impact of Katrina on hospitals and healthcare, which has regularly measured itself against the ghost of a seemingly manageable Category 3 storm that
Read More
How Will ACA-Repeal Legislation Impact The Medicaid Population?
The expansion of Medicaid and insurance subsidies through the ACA meant 20.4 million more people had health insurance in 2016 than in 2010. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, somewhere just north of 20 million Americans would lose health insurance in the various repeal-and-replace scenarios that have been floated of late and rejected, for now. That number jumps to 30 million-plus if Obamacare is simply repealed.What all proposed ACA-repeal legislation has in common is
Read More
Why The Opioid Epidemic Makes EHRs Essential To Public Health
When public health is threatened by an outbreak of SARS or Zika or avian influenza, widely disseminated information becomes a crucial tool used to curtail the spread of disease.But transmittable diseases are not the lone threats to public health. Other metaphorically pathogenic events—the current opioid epidemic, for example—are more effectively managed by making sure doctors have complete information when evaluating patients and, especially, writing prescriptions.Even if you know what the
Read More
