ACE Conference

I will be attending the Allscripts Client Experience conference in Orlando tomorrow. Will try to provide some Tweets – see below.

Standards Panel Backs Quality Measures for ‘Meaningful Use’

On Tuesday, the Health IT Standards Committee approved quality measures and standards for how health care providers can demonstrate “meaningful use” of electronic health records by 2011, Government Health IT reports.

The standards panel endorsed a matrix of 27 quality measures and 12 standards that build on each other to improve patient outcomes. The standards call for health care providers to use health IT tools for transmitting:

• Continuity of care documents;
• Discharge summaries;
• Inpatient and outpatient prescriptions;
• Laboratory test results; and
• Other structured health data.

The committee said health providers who have not yet adopted EHR technology could use certain unstructured data for 2011, provided that they work to eventually meet structured data standards.

John Halamka, co-chair of the Standards Committee, said the panel attempted to provide “comfort levels” to encourage physician compliance with the standards and quality measures. He said future criteria will require health care providers to meet stricter standards.

The standards panel also suggested that meaningful use criteria require health care providers to fully comply with HIPAA privacy and security rules by 2011 .

Survey on HIE released

This morning the eHealth Initiative (eHI) released Migrating Toward Meaningful Use: The State of Health Information Exchange, a report based on eHI’s Sixth Annual Survey of Health Information Exchange. The unique and timely report was announced and discussed at a Capitol Hill event in Washington, D.C. that featured keynote speeches by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Dr. David Blumenthal, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. The report includes responses from 150 community-based initiatives and shows a nearly 40 percent increase in the number of advanced or “operational” initiatives exchanging information. You can download the full PDF from the Files BOX on this page.

Webinars, podcasts etc.

I thought that these webinars and podcasts may be of interest – please take a look and let me know what you think

http://sites.mckesson.com/clinicalleadership/

http://www.dbmotion.com/webinarinvitation/

http://www.himss.org/ASP/physicianCommunityPodcast.asp

Interview with Dr Bill Bria.

http://histalk2.com/2009/07/13/histalk-interviews-william-bria-md-chief-medical-information-officer-shriners-hospitals-for-children/

An interesting proposal from the UK Conservative Party……

Leaders from the U.K.’s Tory Party are considering a plan to allow patients to transfer their electronic health records to online services operated by Google, Microsoft or other private firms, London’s Daily Mail reports.

The conservatives’ proposal would be an alternative to Connecting for Health, a National Health Service EHR system supported by the Labour Party.

Last year, the U.K.’s National Audit Office said NHS’ IT program was over budget and running behind schedule (Cellan-Jones, “dot.life,” BBC News, 7/6).

The NHS project is expected to launch in 2014 at a cost of 12.4 billion British pounds, or about $20.1 billion.

Tory leaders said the government’s IT system is not secure because all NHS staff can access patient records .Tory leader David Cameron said, “You don’t need a massive central computer to do this. People can store their health records securely online; they can show them to whichever doctor they want” .

Under the Tory proposal, patients could choose to move their EHRs to Web sites run by private firms. They then could access their medical record from a home computer.

Patients would need to provide consent before a health care worker could access their records.

Tory leaders said that they have not decided which private firms will provide the services but that multiple options will be available .

Although applications such as Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault already are available in the U.S., the programs would need to be adapted for use in the U.K .

Officials said it is too early to estimate a total price tag for the project. However, a Tory spokesperson said the service will “almost certainly” be available at no-cost to users .A spokesperson also said the party would discuss more details of its plan after a Tory-commissioned independent panel completes its review of NHS’ computing services (Sparrow, Guardian, 7/6).

The spokesperson said the project “is just speculation at this stage” (Press Association, 7/6).

Privacy experts have raised several concerns about the Tory proposal.

Some advocates claim that storing patient data on private Web sites will make the information more vulnerable to hackers.

In addition, the British Medical Association said the Tories’ plan to require patient consent for EHR access could hinder patient safety. For instance, physicians would be unable to access medical records for unconscious patients under the proposal .

Other observers have raised ethical issues, contending that the Tory scheme will disadvantage people without Internet access.

In addition, others have questioned whether private firms such as Google or Microsoft would attempt to profit from the venture by selling private patient data .

Now this will spice it up a bit!……..

Lawsuit Filed Over Stimulus Package’s Health IT Provisions

A new civil lawsuit alleges that the federal economic stimulus package’s health IT provisions violate patients’ privacy rights, Health Data Management reports.

The lawsuit alleges eight counts of violating patients’ rights to privacy, due process and personal security, as well as violations to the HIPAA medical privacy rule and Federal Common Law.

Beatrice Heghmann, a registered nurse, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on June 25 and is seeking class action status. The lawsuit names HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, White House Office of Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle and CMS Administrator Charlene Frizzera as defendants (Goedert, Health Data Management, 7/6).

Lawsuit Details

The lawsuit is seeking an injunction to limit access to patients’ personal health information and prevent the distribution of the $22 billion allocated for EHR systems.

Heghmann argues that a federal stimulus package provision that aims to get all residents’ health records online by 2014 will put patients at risk of having their personal health information exposed (Merrill, Healthcare IT News, 7/2).

The lawsuit states, “Since Medicare and Medicaid now cover only about 23% of the population, the Stimulus Act by design [affects] the privacy of the personal health information for the 65% of the population such as the Plaintiff and all those similarly situated who are covered by private health insurance” (Health Data Management, 7/6).

Online Consults – the way of the future?

http://tiny.cc/1jxGH From today’s Wall Street Journal.