Emr Exploration

Electronic Medical Records & HITECH Lyon, Popanz  Forester May 7, 2009 An exploration of an evolving regulatory environment

There's another acronym in town: HITECH
The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act
It is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 or "the stimulus package“

Basically:
Provides incentives to hospitals and doctor's offices to move to electronic medical or electronic health records (EHR)
There are incentives to and penalties for failure to:
Use a “certified” EHR:
Demonstrate “meaningful use” of an EHR:

Use a “certified” EHR
The act does not specify what “certification” will mean or who will provide certification. What the act does specify is the technology must include patient demographic and clinical health information and have the capacity to provide clinical decision and physician order entry.

Demonstrate “meaningful use” of an EHR
Health and Human Services (HHS) will be defining what “meaningful use” means in the year ahead. The following conditions for “meaningful use” have already been identified. The EHR must:
Use e-Prescribing: This means that the EHR must allow physicians to prescribe over the Internet.
Electronically exchange information: The ability to exchange clinical information with labs, hospitals, providers, and payers including Medicare and Medicaid
Submit clinical quality measures: including payer-specific quality measures

Been here before
At this point there is only:
Vague direction
A target date: 5 years
Uncertainty
Recent similar circumstances
HIPAA
Y2K
Mergers

Getting started
Get a structure in place to find and track information and move toward the certainty required for action
Define “now” because that is the place you will have to start
Develop a “living” strategy or master plan

Getting Started
Create a team to focus and define:
Scope for EMR at your hospital or clinic
External status: regulatory, standards, vendor solutions, sources of support …
Internal status: records processes, systems, infrastructure, plans …
“ Success” for your organization
High level strategy for organization, planning and budgeting

Likely strategy elements
Managed by a project office for control, flexibility and visibility
Implemented in phases for cost/benefit
Vendor system and/or services to take advantage of proven solutions to common problems
Interface intensive to serve all stakeholders
Database driven – data intensive
System and data security critical

The Team
Chaired by a senior executive
Patient care representatives including nurses and doctors
Records management
Systems
HR
Compliance
Security
Process manager familiar with similar complex, vague and time driven projects

We work in the
white space of
organizations …
including HIPAA, Y2K ,
mergers and the
implementation
of evolving regulations
The white spaces of organizations occur on organization charts between internal departments, in contractual ambiguity and regulatory complexity.
They are places where functional misunderstandings occur, communication falters, roles change, priorities conflict, rewards are unclear, risks are unknown, and managers sometimes see threats to their careers that outweigh the opportunities.
We work in those white spaces to define problems so they can be solved, design solutions so they can be implemented, and structure implementation so it can be managed.
Hal Amens
[email_address]

Emr Exploration

by Hal Amens on May 17, 2009

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Emr Exploration — Presentation Transcript