phenomenalplace

In the new world of healthcare where price and quality are the key drivers of an informed consumer, sharing a much greater burden of the cost, will begin to demand experiences online that they commonly have with other companies. Online represents a great opportunity for consumer directed healthcare organizations to break from the pack and create an online healthcare experience that is memorable and exceeds an individuals or families experience, expectations. Are you ready for the challenge? Most healthcare sites today are static containing the usual about us, our services location, etc., etc., etc. Little use of video or other creative ways to engage the customer. Notice that I said customer and not patient. Not everyone that comes to your site is a patient or will be a patient. They are consumers looking for information. Could be a competitor too. In any case, when you look at your site, does it: Delight your customer? Create sustainable differentiation? Is adaptable to new opportun...

When I was in training as a Resident and a Fellow, I remember taking only a couple of sick days over the entire 6-year period. And I had to stay home because I could not stop praying to the porcelain Goddess during a bout of a particularly nasty flu, despite a vaccination. I actually took pride in my health record, and attributed it directly to being rather sickly as a child. Well, not really sickly; I just contracted all of the childhood illnesses that prevailed at the time in my geography. Yes, I spent my childhood in Odessa, Ukraine, where I got vaccinated against polio and smallpox, but not against measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, whooping cough or any other diseases that our children in the West will never contract. So, every couple of months I would succumb and have to stay home with a fever and a rash, and my mother would call my pediatrician who would come and visit me in our home promptly to examine me and, most of the time, reassure my mother that I would likely survive ...

My father passed away about two weeks ago after battling a brain tumor for some time. Initially diagnosed with an extensive inoperable mass one and one-half years ago, upon presenting with a focal seizure, he did well with only one medication for seizure control for about ten months. Around Christmas of 2009, however, he landed in the hospital in status epilepticus that took three days to control. After these days of florid hallucinations alternating with pharmacologically achieved stupor, he came out of it remarkably cognitively intact, still able to quote poetry and sing Italian opera arias in their entirety. Although he was now unable to use his legs, he eagerly accepted the prospect of getting back on his feet by working hard in physical therapy. And though this never came to be, he managed to survive for additional seven months. But my Dad was not your average guy. A survivor of World War II, an immigrant from the Soviet Union, a retired professor of mechanical engineering, he wa...

The Subcommittee on Health of the House Energy and Commerce Committee  held a hearing on Tuesday, July 27, 2010, in 2322 Rayburn House Office Building entitled “Implementation of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health. Reported Emily Long at NextGov : Members of the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee questioned whether health care providers will run out and purchase new technology knowing that the certification program won't be up and running until 2012. Providers who don't demonstrate meaningful use by 2015 could face penalties. According to Blumenthal, The Office of the National Coordinator has in place a temporary certification program, but it doesn't include all the criteria that providers will have to meet in the long run.The certification standards are entirely new because they must reflect the requirements of meaningful use, he said, adding, "We don't want to create the impression for providers that something they'r...

As the Unites States moves towards a more centralized government role in healthcare, Great Britain is beginning to move in the other direction. The new coalition government has proposed some quite radical plans for the National Health Service (NHS) by shifting control of the $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to local physicians while also promising to put more power in the hands of patients. The paper (embedded below) states: "The current architecture of the health system has developed piecemeal, involves duplication and is unwieldy. Liberating the NHS, and putting power in the hands of patients and clinicians, means we will be able to effect a radical simplification, and remove layers of management." Some of the main points in the paper include: The retention of national and regional commissioning, which will come under a new NHS Commissioning Board The recognition that research is vital in order to identify new ways of preventing, diagnosing a...

The eHealth Initiative (eHI) released a new report entitled "The State of Health Information Exchange in 2010: Connecting the Nation to Achieve Meaningful Use." The report identifies significant growth in the industry, as well as rising concerns related to new government policies, and an increased focus on patients. The report was shared with several hundred state and industry leaders during the National Forum on Health Information Exchange in Washington, DC. The eHealth Initiative has been tracking the progress of health information exchange initiatives for seven years. This year, eHI identified 234 active health information exchange initiatives across the country and 199 organizations responded to the annual survey. Several key findings emerged from the survey results: Despite recent funding, significant challenges exist to supporting provider attainment of meaningful use. The survey revealed that despite expanding capabilities, the ability of HIEs to support providers as t...

With the health information technology industry ramping up to help physicians and hospitals meet meaningful use, there is opportunity to bring open source solutions to bear. At the intersection of health care, government and open source, these three have a unique perspective on how to address the pressing needs within health care. If you have not had a chance to see the interview on Radar with Brian Behlendorf, Arien Malec and David Riley check it out at radar.oreilly.com

The House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health held a Hearing on Efforts to Promote the Adoption and Meaningful Use of Health Information Technology on July 20, 2010. Text of the testimony provided at the meeting is below the videos: Testimony By David Blumenthal M.D. National Coordinator for Health Information Technology U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Testimony By Tony Trenkle Director Office of E-Health Standards and Services Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Testimony By Christine Bechtel Vice President National Partnership for Women and Families Testimony By Phyllis Teater Chief Information Officer Ohio State University Medical Center, Columbus, Ohio Testimony By Eugene Heslin M.D. Saugerties, New York Testimony By Charles W. Jarvis Vice Chair Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Electronic Health Record Association (EHRA), Chicago, Illinois Testimony By Jonathan P. Hare Chairman Resilient Network Systems, Inc., San Francisco...

With patients across the country voicing a growing desire for greater engagement in and control over their medical care, a new study involving patients in Boston, Pennsylvania and Seattle will examine the impact of adding a new layer of openness to a traditionally one-sided element of the doctor-patient relationship—the notes that doctors record during and after patients’ visits. Funded through a $1.4 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Pioneer Portfolio—which supports innovative ideas and projects that may lead to important breakthroughs in health and health care—the 12-month OpenNotes© project will evaluate the impact on both patients and physicians of sharing, through online medical record portals, the comments and observations made by physicians after each patient encounter. Approximately 100 primary care physicians and 25,000 patients at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston, Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania, and Harborview Medical ...

Mirth Corporation, the leader in commercial open source healthcare information technology, successfully powered the nation's first publically staged multi-organization demonstration of NHIN Direct standards and technologies. The demonstration included secure clinical information exchange between healthcare providers across three prominent California-based Health Information Exchanges. It took place on July 9th at Redwood MedNet's 4th Annual HIE Conference in Santa Rosa, CA, 50 miles north of San Francisco. Organizations participating in the landmark demonstration included the pioneering Redwood MedNet Health Information Exchange, as well as the Western Health Information Network from Long Beach, CA, and Physicians Medical Group of Santa Cruz. Technology partners supporting the initiative -- in addition to Mirth Corporation -- included Harris Corporation, MedPlus, creator of Care360, and Microsoft, developer of HealthVault, a personal health technology platform. "Microsoft ...

Student employees and Brigham Young University video staff created this Old-Spice-themed ad for Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library . This is really quite funny and creative... Tip of the hat to  scopeblog.stanford.edu

Watch this report on Health Information Technology to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) during their July 16, 2010 meeting: The report has been released. You can view the report and video at the PCAST Report on Health IT post. ...

We have reached a fulcrum point in the history of health care in our country. The announcement on Tuesday of the final rule establishing Medicare and Medicaid incentive programs for the meaningful use of electronic health records (EHR) creates a framework for change that will have reverberations throughout the health care industry. An important companion rule (pdf) was also released that establishes standards, specifications and certification criteria for EHRs. David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health information technology at Health and Human Services (HHS), and Marilyn Tavenner, principal deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), published an overview of the meaningful use rule in the the New England Journal of Medicine . John D. Halamka, of both Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, wrote an excellent analysis of the final standards rule on his blog . I expect in the coming months there will be a great de...

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced final rules to help improve Americans' health, increase safety and reduce health care costs through expanded use of electronic health records (EHR). Present: - Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary, US Dept of Health & Human Services (HHS) - Dr. Donald Berwick, Director, Center for Medicare & Medicare Services (CMS) - Dr. David Blumenthal, Director, ONC for Health IT - Dr Regina Benjamin, US Surgeon General - Reginal Holliday, patient advocate

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) issued a final rule defining meaningful use requirements to qualify for incentive payments under the HITECH portion of the ARRA. The final rule for meaningful use is embedded below (it is temporarily available at the Public Inspection Desk , but this link will expire after the rule is actually published) and it is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register July, 28 2010. The rule definitively outlines all the specifics of Stage 1 meaningful use and clinical quality measure reporting to receive the incentive payments in 2011 and 2012. The final rule builds on the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) released December 30, 2009. The definition of meaningful use attempts to harmonize criteria across other CMS programs as much as possible and coordinate with quality initiatives. It also is closely linked to the certification standards criteria in development by the Office of the National Coordin...