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Blumenthal: Certified EHRs should be available by fall

The health IT community should know by this fall if EHRs they have purchased or are considering purchasing are certified under the federal government’s new, temporary certification program, national health IT coordinator Dr. David Blumenthal said, according to Healthcare IT News. Blumenthal made the pronouncement on a conference call with reporters after unveiling the final rule for a short-term certification program last Friday. Vendors may be cutting it close, though, since the Medicare and Medicaid bonuses for “meaningful use” of EHRs begin Oct. 1 for hospitals and Jan. 1 for physicians. However, providers will only have to demonstrate meaningful use for 90 consecutive days to earn full credit for the first year of the program, according to proposed rules. CMS is expected to finalize its regulations for meaningful use within the next week. “Certification was part and parcel of the process of making incentives work, and making the electronic health system work,” Blumenthal said. “Certification provides a basic guarantee to the purchasers–mostly providers of care–that the electronic health record they purchase will be capable of meaningful use.” The temporary program is intended to be “a bridge to the second, permanent certification,” Blumenthal said. The permanent process should be announced before the end of 2010, he said. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology will begin accepting applications July 1 for entities wishing to be authorized testing and certification bodies. The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology announced its intention to apply, and the Austin, Texas-based Drummond Group also has expressed an interest in starting an EHR certification program. For more: - have a look at this Healthcare IT News story

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eHealth Initiative finds significant gains in EMR adoption since 2007

Posted by admin | Posted in Healthcare EMR | Posted on 08-07-2010

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Health IT adoption is gaining steam, but many have been unable to articulate the value of EMRs within their organizations and, significantly, to the public, a new report suggests. Still, people are optimistic about the future, but worry that the transition to ICD-10 coding and HIPAA 5010 transactions could slow momentum.

The “National Progress Report on eHealth,” supported by the Commonwealth Fund and released by the broad-based, nonprofit eHealth Initiative, is an update on a 2007 study meant to identify trends that have emerged since passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February 2009. For the report, the eHealth Initiative surveyed more than 100 healthcare professionals in each of five focus areas: aligning incentives; engaging consumers; improving population health; managing privacy, security & confidentiality; and transforming care delivery.

“Contributors to the report found that, while considerable progress has been made over the past three years, challenges remain,” eHI CEO Jennifer Covich Bordenick says in a press release. “Coordinating public- and private-sector efforts, and communicating the true value of HIT and HIE to consumers will be critical as we move forward.”

Specifically, 61 percent of respondents said “significant” progress has been made in EMR and HIT adoption since 2007, but 55 percent disagreed with the statement that the value of health IT is clearly understood. In fact, two-thirds said that efforts to educate the public about EMRs and health information exchange have been ineffective, though nearly as many thought Regional Extension Centers and the related National Health Information Technology Research Center would be important to educating providers about the value of health IT.

For greater detail:
- read this TMCnet story
- see this eHealth Initiative press release
- view the full report (.pdf)

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