News 9/1/11

CMS issues its final rule on changes to the e-prescribing incentive program and includes multiple hardship exemption categories for EPs. EPs have until November 1, 2011 to request a hardship exemption for the 2012 eRX payment adjustment. Categories that EPs may claim include:

• The practice is located in a rural area without high speed Internet access
• The practice is in an area without sufficient available pharmacies for e-prescribing
• The practice is registered to participate in the Medicare or Medicaid EHR incentive program
• Local, state, or Federal law prohibits e-prescribing
• The EP does limited prescribing
• The EP has insufficient opportunities to report the eRX measure due to limitations of the measure’s denominator.

PriMed (CT) expands its relationship with MED3OOO with the selection of InteGreat EHR for its 28 locations and 75 providers.

Crystal Run Healthcare (NY) contracts with DrScore.com to provide patient satisfaction survey services for its 200 providers. When I was on Crystal Run’s Web site, I noticed they have temporarily closed their Goshen office as a result of Hurricane Irene-related damage.

athenahealth launches athenaCoordinator to facilitate care delivery among hospitals, practices, and other caregivers. It’s based on technology from Proxsys, a Birmingham, AL-based company that athenahealth recently acquired.

 

HealthFusion introduces MediDraw, a Web-based tool that allows physicians to draw directly on a patient’s photo or an anatomical outline image of a body part.  Providers can upload images via a smartphone or PC camera and store the image in MediTouch’s EHR. I found the above foot on HealthFusion’s Web site. I don’t know much about foot anomalies, so I just annotated the toes a pretty shade of red.

The HIMSS EHR Association urges CMS Administrator Donald Berwick, MD to reconsider the proposal to require the submission of patient-level data as it pilots the electronic submission of clinical quality measures (CQMs.) The Association claims the proposed rule for the 2012 Medicare Fee Schedule would put too much of a burden on provider organizations and recommends that CMS rely on the reporting of aggregate data instead.

The Orthopaedic Institute of Central Jersey and Orthpaedic Spine Institute select SRS EHR for their combined 19 providers.

Greenway Medical releases its remote clinical and financial product, PrimeMobile, as a native application for Apple’s iPad.

A number of ambulatory EHR vendors are hosting user group conferences over the next couple of months. A few were kind enough to flatter me with an invite – thank you. Though I’d love to skip out on the day job and attend each of them, one user meeting plus MGMA in Las Vegas will have to satisfy my fall travel bug.  Here’s a quick run-down of some of the upcoming conferences:

• Greenway: September 8-11, Orlando
• MED3OOO: September 21-23, Palm Springs
• SRS: September 21-23, Woodcliff Lake, NJ
• eClinicalWorks: October 1-4, Phoenix
• Ingenix CareTracker: October 5-7, Boston
• Practice Fusion: November 11, San Francisco
• Nextgen: November 14-16, Las Vegas

E-mail Inga.