Knowledge Center

Mark Johnson, RN-BC, MHA, CPHIMS

We just wrapped up the HIMSS 2013 annual conference in New Orleans. What an exciting time for healthcare IT! There is a movement towards patient-centric care and healthcare IT is leading the way. Despite the circus tent feel of the exhibit hall and frenetic pace of the conference attendees, you could sense a change afoot. Signs that patient-centric care must be embraced could be heard in Dr. Eric Topol’s keynote address challenging the status quo of the “physician knows best” approach, seen in the Regina Holliday Walking Gallery paintings on the backs of attendees, experienced in the Patient Engagement forum, followed on Twitter via the #PatientEngagement Tweetup, read in the new book Engage! Transforming Healthcare through Digital Patient Engagement or by the fact that HIMSS dubbed Tuesday “Patient Engagement Day.” There was a palpable push to make attendees realize that patient engagement must be part of the solutions that providers and vendors are offering.

A few patient engagement announcements at one HIMSS conference will not make any difference without action. We have a long way to go before realizing the true value of making patients and caregivers the primary drivers of healthcare. That’s one of the reasons I joined the eConnecting with Consumers committee at HIMSS last year. The committee has worked to promote the paradigm shift towards the patient and caregivers, following their mission to enable providers with the toolset necessary to successfully engage their patients throughout the care cycle, not just at the point of billing. With ACOs and HIEs dominating the future reimbursement landscape, providers without the tools to engage patients will be left behind. In 2013, our committee plans to continue producing podcasts and blog postings about how providers can use the tools available now and promote emerging and disruptive technologies.

Another role I have is on the Social Media Taskforce responsible for exposing providers to these tools via our social media channels. Our committee was instrumental in getting the new book Engage! Transforming Healthcare through Digital Patient Engagement written and published in time for the annual conference. Our committee is also working to promote better patient-facing health IT solutions that incorporate user interfaces that are intuitive and easy to use. Our policy advocacy taskforce is helping make sure our government regulations are not a hurdle to patient engagement. I am honored to have the chance to work with some of the smartest people in the industry on this committee; it is a talented group of clinicians, IT leaders and patient advocacy champions doing great work for HIMSS members via the eConnecting with Consumers committee.

I am proud of the work Iatric Systems does to help facilitate patient engagement for our customers. However, there is a lot of work ahead for everyone involved. For Iatric Systems, the ability to enable providers to truly integrate patients and families into their care is our ultimate goal. Our patient portal, PtAccess, is just one tool that helps bring patients and caregivers into the driver’s seat. By providing the most comprehensive integration to our customers, we can make patient-centric care happen. It won’t be easy, but the rewards will be for everyone. I look forward to what the future brings for true patient-centric care and how healthcare IT and Iatric Systems will be a part of the solution!

Source.

Kay Jackson, Manager, Software Certification, and Compliance

 This is a question I am asked several times a week. I thought I would summarize the questions I hear most often together with my research. Keep in mind that no matter what reporting period your hospital will be tracking on or after October 1, 2013, a portal solution will be required for your CMS single quarter FY 2014 MU Attestation.

Remember, the Meaningful Use requirement states unique patients discharged from the inpatient or emergency departments during the EHR reporting period have their information available online within 36 hours of discharge. Your facility needs to prepare for the portal selection process and choose the best portal for your community.

The first step for portal success is to create a marketing plan for adding a portal for your community patient engagement needs. Think of the portal in terms of the advantages it will provide your patients, and not just something you must do to meet Meaningful Use.

Your core team for the portal selection process should include team members from Marketing, clinical areas, Access, physician staff, medical records, CIO, IT, CFO, and PFS. Plan how your whole organization team members will view adding a portal; educate those team members of the value the portal will provide so they can build awareness as well.

Create a workflow plan on how your team will offer access to the portal for both current and past patients, and the process for tracking the access provided. This access provided count is necessary for your team to calculate your percentage for Meaningful Use. In addition, retain that access provided query for returning patients so your team can note access has been provided and encourage adoption and continued reliance on the portal for their complete health information.

Consider the enrollment process during registration, since that is usually the first interaction with your patient. You can verify the identity of the patient prior to creating the access code needed to enable the patient to create a portal account. The marketing plan needs to include how you will build adoption of the portal and continued use for the foreseeable future. Some ideas for marketing your portal include:

• Set up Health Fairs right before and after the portal is live to sign up patients
• Create a policy that states NO ID, no portal access code issued for that patient
• Include the process for parental and custodian access in your organizational plan

Another suggestion is to consider including a portal engagement consulting team that has the knowledge to help you create and market the portal adoption for your community needs  and ensure the adoption needed not only for Meaningful Use but to help the patient engage in their own health. Branding of the portal with logos and other items also fosters the united front between patient and hospital.

Next time I will address how patient convenience within the portal can drive adoption and more.

Source.

Upgrading to a new level of MEDITECH can feel like a long, lonely, and sometimes overwhelming climb. But why go it alone, when there are so many who went before you?

We can answer your questions to help you reach the top of your MEDITECH 6.x mountain!

Attend the MEDITECH 6.x Summit. Learn from your peers who have traversed the crevices, avoided the pitfalls, and reached the top.

Panelists
Money Atwal
CFO/CIO
HHSC – East Hawaii Region
Hilo Medical Centre, Hawaii

Debbie Bates-Travis
Information Systems Analyst
Humber River Hospital
Weston, Ontario

Cory Bell
Regional Project Director
Champlain Association of MEDITECH Partners
Ottawa, Ontario

Chris Burke, RN
PCS Analyst
Boulder Community Hospital
Boulder, Colorado

Michael Cohen
VP – Clinical Support, IM & Chief Privacy Officer
Queensway Carleton Hospital
Ottawa, Ontario

Tony Lapera
Network Manager
Doctors Community Hospital
Lanham, Maryland

Mohammad Siddiqui
Assistant Director of Pharmacy
St. Claire Regional Medical Center
Morehead, Kentucky

Brian Nelligan
(Panel Facilitator)
Application Analyst
Rouge Valley Health Systems
Toronto, Ontario
The 6.x Summit will be presented on Thursday May 30
Attendance at the Summit is included with your conference registration.

There is no additional fee.

MUSE attendee registration.

Important information for building your Meaningful Use strategy

You’re hearing about Meaningful Use Stage 2 Objectives everywhere. What you’re not hearing is how your hospital can meet those objectives by the 2014 deadline.

Thursday, October 11, 2012, 2:00pm ET
Learn from Meaningful Use expert Dr. John Halamka, Chief Information Officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, as he lays out his roadmap for achieving attestation, including the interoperability and the patient engagement objectives required in Stage 2.

Here are just the highlights of what you’ll learn:

• Interpretation of the CMS final Stage 2 ruling
• Roadmap and reporting periods for attestation
• Guidance on achieving interoperability and patient engagement

Who should attend?

CEOs, CNOs, CIOs, CQOs, and any healthcare professionals responsible for Meaningful Use compliance.

Don’t miss this important presentation for building your Stage 2 Meaningful Use strategy.

For more information, please contact Amanda Howell at Amanda.Howell@iatric.com or 978-674-8121.

Everyone eagerly awaited the release of Stage 2 final regulations; when it happened on August 24th it was like a huge present dropped in our laps. Over the next few weeks, we worked to unwrap the present. I must have attended over 20 webcasts to help me really understand Stage 2. Were you overwhelmed as well? By now I am sure that the regulations have been passed around and comments voiced. Now the planning begins. Customers are already asking what Iatric Systems is doing to prepare for Stage 2. What solutions will help you meet the new 2014 requirements and challenges? If your team has questions, do not hesitate to contact us.

First of all, the ONC-ATCB certification for our suite of Meaningful Use solutions has been extended to 12/31/13. For the 2014 Meaningful Use certification course, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) will create and release 2014 Edition Test Procedures scripts by criteria over a period of time that they call waves. On September 7th, the first wave of 14 draft test procedures was released. There are a total of 42 hospital criteria for 2014 and as each wave is released, there is a two week comment period that must also take place. So the full release of the 2014 Edition of standards and certification criteria will take months to complete.

Why is this important? All vendors must align their solutions to a 2014 certification criteria and be tested based on the solution’s ability to meet a single or multiple criteria. The testing is estimated to start in January, 2013, and all solutions must be certified by December 31, 2013. As you see, that provides a small window of time for all vendors to do development and testing, and providers to purchase new technology to meet 2014 requirements. Providers must also validate that their current solutions that are part of the Meaningful Use plan are updated to satisfy the 2014 requirements.

Providers should start planning today and asking questions. Our team is ready to assist. Even if your hospital is still in a Stage 1 reporting period on the 12/31/13 date, your Meaningful Use solutions must be certified under the 2014 requirements. Iatric Systems will provide updates to the certification of our solutions via our webpage, newsletters and emails as we progress with the testing. We will ensure that our solutions will be ready for your team by 12/31/13. ONC recognized that this short window of time could impact all players. They accommodated this problem (for 2014 only) by having providers participate in a single 90 day reporting period regardless of Stage.

Second, there was no surprise that with the publication came some adjustments to Stage 1. The changes impact hospitals for Computerized Physician Order Entry (Core 1), Vital Signs (Core 7), testing of Health Information Exchange (Core 13), providing patients with electronic copies of their records (Core 11) and the Public Health Interfaces (Menu 8-10). Include reviewing these Stage 1 changes in your planning process to adjust your reporting to match the change. If you need more information about these updates, feel free to contact me.

Lastly, Iatric Systems remains dedicated to assisting our customers with achieving the important goal for Meaningful Use in 2014 and beyond. Our team will be updating our Meaningful Use Matrix very soon. We’ll also be offering educational events surrounding Stage 2 (see above for Dr. John Halamka webcast information) and how our solutions match your needs and the 2014 requirements. Listed below are some of our applications and interfaces that will provide solutions for Stage 1 and for Stage 2 (additional measures may be added to these Iatric Systems solutions as more information is released by ONC for 2014—please watch for updates) include:

• PtAccess—Patient portal Stage 1 (Core 11 and 12) Stage 2 (Core 9)
• Meaningful Use Manager—Hospital dashboard tracking with CQMs Stage 1 and 2 (Automated Measures calculation and CQM; we also provide an EP MU Dashboard and CQM solution)
• Public Health Interfaces—Stage 1 (Menu 8-10) Stage 2 (Core 14-16)
• Patient Discharge Instructions—Stage 1 (Core 12 and Menu 6) and Stage 2 (Core 11 and 12)
• Security Audit Manager—Assists to satisfy Stage 1 (Core 14) and Stage 2 (Core 16)

Resources:
The Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs Stage 2 Final Rule National Provider call September 13, 2012 was an excellent event; review the power point slides.

Other helpful Stage 2 links provided by CMS and ONC are:

• ONC Meaningful Use Stage 2 Homepage (Includes links to the text of the final rules, HHS and CMS press releases, and FAQs at the bottom of the page)
• CMS Stage 2 Webpage
• ONC Fact Sheet: 2014 Edition Standards & Certification Criteria (S & CC) Final Rule
• ONC Stage 2 Overview Tipsheet
• ONC Compare for Eligible Providers
• ONC Compare for Hosptials
• ONC Stage 2 Fact Sheet

This article was originally published in Iatric Systems Updates! Newsletter in September 2012.