News 12/3/15

Top News

A HealthITJobs.com survey of 700 healthcare IT professionals finds the median industry salary to be $80,000 and salary bonuses to be $5,000. There seems to an $18,000 gap between what employees think they’re worth and what they’re actually getting paid, a statistic that corresponds with the half of respondents who are planning to change jobs within the year. Project managers receive the biggest salaries, and jobs in New England pay the most. Consulting companies offer the biggest paychecks, while physicians groups and clinics pay the least – just one more reason to thank your family physician for doing what they do the next time you see them.

Webinars

I really enjoyed tuning in to yesterday’s webinar with VMware, which featured the entertaining and informative Metro Health VP of IT Joshua Wilda. He kept coming back to the value virtual desktop interfaces bring to physicians in terms of mobile care coordination and even work/life balance. Kudos to his wife, a clinician and new mom, for providing Wilda with one of the best work/life balance anecdotes I’ve heard in awhile. Check out the recorded presentation here, and the Twitter-friendly recap here.

December 9 (Wednesday) 12 noon ET. “Population Health in 2016: Know How to Move Forward.” Sponsored by Athenahealth. Presenter: Michael Maus, VP of enterprise solutions, Athenahealth. ACOs need a population health solution that helps them manage costs, improve outcomes, and elevate the care experience. Athenahealth’s in-house expert will explain why relying on software along isn’t enough, how to tap into data from multiple vendors, and how providers can manage patient populations.

December 9 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “The Health Care Payment Evolution: Maximizing Value Through Technology.” Sponsored by Medicity. Presenter: Charles D. Kennedy, MD, chief population health officer, Healthagen. This presentation will provide a brief history of the ACO Pioneer and MSSP programs and will discuss current market trends and drivers and the federal government’s response to them. Learn what’s coming in the next generation of programs such as the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and the role technology plays in driving the evolution of a new healthcare marketplace.

December 16 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “A Sepsis Solution: Reducing Mortality by 50 Percent Using Advanced Decision Support.” Sponsored by Wolters Kluwer Health. Presenter: Stephen Claypool, MD, medical director of innovation lab and VP of clinical development and informatics for clinical software solutions, Wolters Kluwer Health. Sepsis claims 258,000 lives and costs $20 billion annually in the US, but early identification and treatment remains elusive, emphasizing the need for intelligent, prompt, and patient-specific clinical decision support. Huntsville Hospital reduced sepsis mortality by 53 percent and related readmissions by 30 percent using real-time surveillance of EHR data and evidence-based decision support to generate highly sensitive and specific alerts.

December 16 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Need for Integrated Data Enhancement and Analytics – Unifying Management of Healthcare Business Processes.” Sponsored by CitiusTech. Presenters: Jeffrey Springer, VP of product management, CitiusTech; John Gonsalves, VP of healthcare provider market, CitiusTech. Providers are driving consumer-centric care with guided analytic solutions that answer specific questions, but each new tool adds complexity. It’s also important to tap real-time data from sources such as social platforms, mobile apps, and wearables to support delivery of personalized and proactive care. This webinar will discuss key use cases that drive patient outcomes, the need for consolidated analytics to realize value-based care, scenarios to maximize efficiency, and an overview of CitiusTech’s integrated healthcare data enhancement and analytics platform.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Announcements and Implementations

Therap Services offers developmental disability software bundles designed for agencies applying for the $10 million NY Dept. of Health and NY Office for People with Developmental Disabilities health information investment program. Approved recipients can use the funds for projects related to technology purchases, including EHRs, and PM and electronic billing software; as well as upgrades and services.

Healthcare pricing transparency app developer FairCare makes its search engine available to consumers on the Web, offering prices in every zip code for 10,000 medical and dental procedures performed by 4 million US physicians.

Salesforce and Persistent Systems develop a set of physician and patient relationship management tools including campaign management, marketing KPI dashboards, referral management, and CRM functionality.

Atlanta-based Clinical Practice Solutions develops four new Dragon Medical Certified Training and Support Plans for physicians struggling to use the technology to its fullest capabilities.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

ICDLogic joins the Allscripts Developer Program to build an integration between its CypherLink ICD-10 code-generation tool and Allscripts EHR.

The local business paper covers the aggressive efforts of UNC Health Care to recruit independent physicians for its new UNC Health Alliance, a clinically integrated network that already includes 2,000 UNC physicians. The health system wants to add an additional 1,000 physicians to better compete with similar networks developed by Duke Health and WakeMed Health and Hospitals. UNC will provide Alliance physicians with “additional support” including IT integration support, care management, population health analytics, and reporting. All three area health systems are on Epic.

Government and Politics

Bill Frist, MD meets with National Coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD to discuss public health initiatives, likely tying the discussion in to his new Nashville Health nonprofit. Frist hopes to initially focus Nashville Health’s efforts on improving hypertension, smoking cessation, and child health among the city’s 800,000 residents with help from Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine.

Telemedicine

The Washington Post provides an in-depth look at the value telemedicine is bringing to mental health practices in North Carolina. The primary care offices of Carolinas Healthcare System, in particular, have seen great success incorporating telemental health consults into regular office visits. Scores on depression and anxiety screenings have fallen by nearly half since virtual visits were introduced last year.

Other

Mashable looks at the inroads mobile house call startup Pager is making with businesses like Spotify and Birchbox, which offer employees Pager’s services at deep discounts. Employees at Birchbox, a newly self-insured employer, have also used the service to schedule flu shots, health and wellness seminars, sexual health checks, and treatments for common infections. It’s even considering investing in a private room for female health screenings, should its employees feel comfortable enough to undergo gynecological exams just down the hall from the break room.  

Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

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HIStalk Practice Interviews Andrew Sussman, MD EVP and Associate CMO, CVS Health

Andrew Sussman, MD, is executive vice president and associate chief medical officer of CVS Health, and president of MinuteClinic.

Tell me about yourself and your job.
My role at CVS Health is executive vice president and associate chief medical officer, as well as president of MinuteClinic, which is the largest and fastest growing retail medical clinic provider in the United States, with over 1,050 retail healthcare centers in 33 states. Over the past few years, we’ve expanded MinuteClinic’s range of clinical services and formed strategic affiliations with over 60 leading healthcare systems – including the Cleveland Clinic, as well as providers like the Henry Ford Health System, Emory Healthcare and MedStar Health Washington, DC. – to improve patient access to high-quality medical treatment.

How did the relationship with Health is Primary come about?
Retail clinics like MinuteClinic are an important part of supporting access and convenience in the medical neighborhood. Our MinuteClinics are open seven days a week – including evenings and weekends and are conveniently located inside CVS/pharmacy stores. Patients can see one of our family nurse practitioners or physician assistants without an appointment and most insurance is accepted.

MinuteClinic is working with Health is Primary because it’s important to recognize that a connected, accessible healthcare system is the best way to support patients. By partnering with primary care and family medicine, we will continue to improve provider collaboration and help ensure all patients have access to primary care within a coordinated medical neighborhood. MinuteClinic can help fill the gaps in access; for example, half of our patients are seen on evenings and weekends, and many of our patients do not have a PCP. We provide lists of PCPs taking new patients for follow up.

How will CVS and HIP use technology to move this initiative forward?
Technology like EHRs facilitates critical coordination between MinuteClinic and patient-centered medical homes. We place a very high priority on ensuring our clinics and patients are well coordinated with their primary care provider. MinuteClinic uses the Epic Health Record system, one of the most widely used, effective ways to ensure real-time communication with a patient’s medical home. With a patient’s permission, we communicate with their primary care provider about critical health issues, preventive care, and medication adherence. Epic connects with thousands of physician practices around the country, including providers using other EHRs. We also have connections with other EHRs through Epic and Surescripts.

It’s a busy/explosive time for retail clinics. What does CVS have planned in terms of expansion in the next year? And in terms of business partnerships with other organizations like Target?
We are working to transform primary care by expanding our national footprint, offering new clinical services and collaborating with health systems. Based on our current footprint, half of all Americans have a MinuteClinic within 10 miles of their home. In 2016, we will be focusing on integrating our newly acquired clinics in Target stores, assuming regulatory approval. We will also be exploring the delivery of care through telehealth that opens up new opportunities for access to care.

Does CVS anticipate making in the near future any big transitions to new healthcare technologies for its customers (aside from those pharmacy-centric solutions announced on 11/18)?
In 2015, we completed our implementation of the Epic EHR nationwide. We also announced pilots with telehealth providers American Well, Doctor on Demand, and Teladoc. We’re continually looking at new ways to utilize technology that supports our digital innovation model and empowers our customers with a highly personalized experience across all channels.

How will telemedicine factor into the company/clinic’s growth, and will these types of consults be a part of your partnership with HIP?
We are currently piloting ways we can use telehealth to improve and expand patient care in order to add value for patients, clients, and health plans and improve access to low-cost, quality care. During our initial phase of exploration of telehealth, we learned that we could deliver excellent quality care and that patients were extremely satisfied with the care provided. MinuteClinic data recently published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine demonstrated that overall, 95 percent of patients were highly satisfied with the quality of care they received, the ease with which telehealth technology was integrated into the visit, and the timeliness and convenience of their care.

How is CVS working to facilitate interoperability between its clinics, pharmacies, and outside providers? How has the company’s membership in CommonWell facilitated these efforts?
As mentioned, MinuteClinic uses the Epic, which connects with thousands of physician practices around the country and is interoperable with other electronic health record systems. Being involved with CommonWell will also allow us to deliver real-time, pharmacy-based information into physician practices, and helps the pharmacist deliver care-based messages back to patients.

Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 12/2/15

Top News

CMS shares national health expenditures for 2014, highlighting the costly fact that spending grew 5.3 percent last year to $3 trillion – figures that, surprisingly to me, are below most years prior to the ACA. The agency notes that consumer spending grew by only 1.3 percent, compared to 2.4 percent the year before. I’d argue that’s because millions of consumers are delaying or avoiding care all together due to increasingly high deductibles. Those that do seek care are more often than not faced with sticker shock – a consequence of their local family physician giving in to employment pressure from the local health system, which just happens to offer the latest and greatest EHR. Prescription drug prices also played their part in the increase, growing 12.2 percent to $297.7 billion.

Webinars

December 3 (Thursday) 2:00 ET. “501(r) Regulations – What You Need to Know for Success in 2016.” Sponsored by TransUnion. Presenter: Jonathan Wiik, principal consultant, TransUnion Healthcare Solutions. Complex IRS rules take effect on January 1 that will dictate how providers ensure access, provide charity assistance, and collect uncompensated care. This in-depth webinar will cover tools and workflows that can help smooth the transition, including where to focus compliance efforts in the revenue cycle and a review of the documentation elements required.

December 9 (Wednesday) 12 noon ET. “Population Health in 2016: Know How to Move Forward.” Sponsored by Athenahealth. Presenter: Michael Maus, VP of enterprise solutions, Athenahealth. ACOs need a population health solution that helps them manage costs, improve outcomes, and elevate the care experience. Athenahealth’s in-house expert will explain why relying on software along isn’t enough, how to tap into data from multiple vendors, and how providers can manage patient populations.

December 9 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “The Health Care Payment Evolution: Maximizing Value Through Technology.” Sponsored by Medicity. Presenter: Charles D. Kennedy, MD, chief population health officer, Healthagen. This presentation will provide a brief history of the ACO Pioneer and MSSP programs and will discuss current market trends and drivers and the federal government’s response to them. Learn what’s coming in the next generation of programs such as the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and the role technology plays in driving the evolution of a new healthcare marketplace.

December 16 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “A Sepsis Solution: Reducing Mortality by 50 Percent Using Advanced Decision Support.” Sponsored by Wolters Kluwer Health. Presenter: Stephen Claypool, MD, medical director of innovation lab and VP of clinical development and informatics for clinical software solutions, Wolters Kluwer Health. Sepsis claims 258,000 lives and costs $20 billion annually in the US, but early identification and treatment remains elusive, emphasizing the need for intelligent, prompt, and patient-specific clinical decision support. Huntsville Hospital reduced sepsis mortality by 53 percent and related readmissions by 30 percent using real-time surveillance of EHR data and evidence-based decision support to generate highly sensitive and specific alerts.

December 16 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Need for Integrated Data Enhancement and Analytics – Unifying Management of Healthcare Business Processes.” Sponsored by CitiusTech. Presenters: Jeffrey Springer, VP of product management, CitiusTech; John Gonsalves, VP of healthcare provider market, CitiusTech. Providers are driving consumer-centric care with guided analytic solutions that answer specific questions, but each new tool adds complexity. It’s also important to tap real-time data from sources such as social platforms, mobile apps, and wearables to support delivery of personalized and proactive care. This webinar will discuss key use cases that drive patient outcomes, the need for consolidated analytics to realize value-based care, scenarios to maximize efficiency, and an overview of CitiusTech’s integrated healthcare data enhancement and analytics platform.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Best known for managing data conversions for pharmacies, Chicago-based Two Point expands its services to physician groups, healthcare systems, and hospitals. Company founder and president Phil Lisitza caught the data migration bug in 1990 when he helped his father, a pharmacist, migrate data between old and new computer systems.

Announcements and Implementations

Drchrono develops its medical billing app for the iPad, offering real-time claims payment status and rejection rates. The company has also added surgical center billing to its EHR platform.

The Council of Accountable Physician Practices launches Accountablecaredoctors.org to offer physician and consumers resources related to care coordination and value-based care models.

Telemedicine

The Foundation for Rural Service awards four grants of between $250 and $5,000 to projects focused on telemedicine, distance education, and economic development opportunities that benefit rural communities. The winning projects, awarded to Horton Community Enhancement Organization, Circles of McPherson County, and several local hospitals, are endorsed by community-based telecommunications companies that are members of NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association.

Research and Innovation

Entrepreneur highlights promising innovations from Los Angeles TechWeek, a week-long event that occurred simultaneously with other TechWeeks across the country. High on its list of healthcare-related endeavors is Paubox, a two-way, HIPAA-compliant email and file-sharing solution for physician practices developed by a San Francisco-based team that seems to have met at the University of Hawaii. (Pau seems to be a Hawaiian term for “finished” or “done.”)

Other

The Network for Excellence in Health Innovation publishes a report on prescription drug monitoring programs, a hot topic given the federal government’s highly publicized initiative to crack down on nationwide opioid abuse. The report highlights the fact that just 25 percent of PCPs are aware of their prescription drug monitoring programs. Correspondingly, it suggests that programs should make their registries easier to sign up for, and offer unsolicited alerts and reports to ensure physicians get the right information at the right time. PDMP integration with EHRs would likely abate the lack of utilization, and potentially meet Meaningful Use requirements.

Right up my #HIStalking alley: “Don’t Let Your Doctor Kill You” author Erika Schwartz, MD publishes “The Patient’s Manifesto” in an effort to eliminate the fear many patients have of speaking up and out during healthcare encounters.

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• 4 Reasons Private Physicians Should be Thankful That They’re Employed (AdvancedMD)
• Bringing Up Baby with Healow (EClinicalWorks)
• The Business Case for Patient Engagement: Convenience and the Wild Card (Healthwise)

Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 12/1/15

Top News

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama begins covering telemedicine services in an effort to expand access to care in rural parts of the state. Covered services will include behavioral health, cardiologic and dermatologic conditions, and infectious and neurologic diseases. The new service is part of the payer’s Circle of Care Primary Care Select Program, which aims to improve healthcare access and collaboration between Blue Cross, its members, and their PCPs. No mention has been made as to whether Alabama will join the 29 other Blue Cross and Blue Shield health plans that have partnered with American Well for their telemedicine services.

Webinars

December 2 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “The Patient is In, But the Doctor is Out: How Metro Health Enabled Informed Decision-Making with Remote Access to PHI.” Sponsored by Vmware. Presenters: Josh Wilda, VP of IT, Metro Health; James Millington, group product line manager, VMware. Most industries are ahead of healthcare in providing remote access to applications and information. Some health systems, however, have transformed how, when, and where their providers access patient information. Metro Health in Grand Rapids, MI offers doctors fast bedside access to information and lets them review patient information on any device (including their TVs during football weekends!) saving them 30 minutes per day and reducing costs by $2.75 million.

December 2 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Tackling Data Governance: Doctors Hospital at Renaissance’s Strategy for Consistent Analysis.” Sponsored by Premier, Inc. Presenters: Kassie Wu, director of application services, Doctors Hospital at Renaissance; Alex Eastman, senior director of enterprise solutions, Premier, Inc. How many definitions of “complications” (or “cost” or “length of stay”…) do you have? Doctors Hospital at Renaissance understood that inconsistent use of data and definitions was creating inconsistent and untrusted analysis. Join us to hear about their journey towards analytics maturity, including a strategy to drive consistency in the way they use, calculate, and communicate insights across departments.

December 2 (Wednesday) 2:00 ET. “Creating HIPAA-Compliant Applications Without JCAPS/JavaMQ Architecture.” Sponsored by Red Hat. Presenters: Ashwin Karpe, lead of enterprise integration practice, Red Hat Consulting; Christian Posta, principle middleware architect, Red Hat. Oracle JCAPS is reaching its end of life and customers will need a migration solution for creating HIPAA-compliant applications, one that optimizes data flow internally and externally on premise, on mobile devices, and in the cloud. Explore replacing legacy healthcare applications with modern Red Hat JBoss Fuse architectures that are cloud-aware, location-transparent, and highly scalable and are hosted in a container-agnostic manner.

December 3 (Thursday) 2:00 ET. “501(r) Regulations – What You Need to Know for Success in 2016.” Sponsored by TransUnion. Presenter: Jonathan Wiik, principal consultant, TransUnion Healthcare Solutions. Complex IRS rules take effect on January 1 that will dictate how providers ensure access, provide charity assistance, and collect uncompensated care. This in-depth webinar will cover tools and workflows that can help smooth the transition, including where to focus compliance efforts in the revenue cycle and a review of the documentation elements required.

December 9 (Wednesday) 12 noon ET. “Population Health in 2016: Know How to Move Forward.” Sponsored by Athenahealth. Presenter: Michael Maus, VP of enterprise solutions, Athenahealth. ACOs need a population health solution that helps them manage costs, improve outcomes, and elevate the care experience. Athenahealth’s in-house expert will explain why relying on software along isn’t enough, how to tap into data from multiple vendors, and how providers can manage patient populations.

December 9 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “The Health Care Payment Evolution: Maximizing Value Through Technology.” Sponsored by Medicity. Presenter: Charles D. Kennedy, MD, chief population health officer, Healthagen. This presentation will provide a brief history of the ACO Pioneer and MSSP programs and will discuss current market trends and drivers and the federal government’s response to them. Learn what’s coming in the next generation of programs such as the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and the role technology plays in driving the evolution of a new healthcare marketplace.

December 16 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “A Sepsis Solution: Reducing Mortality by 50 Percent Using Advanced Decision Support.” Sponsored by Wolters Kluwer Health. Presenter: Stephen Claypool, MD, medical director of innovation lab and VP of clinical development and informatics for clinical software solutions, Wolters Kluwer Health. Sepsis claims 258,000 lives and costs $20 billion annually in the US, but early identification and treatment remains elusive, emphasizing the need for intelligent, prompt, and patient-specific clinical decision support. Huntsville Hospital reduced sepsis mortality by 53 percent and related readmissions by 30 percent using real-time surveillance of EHR data and evidence-based decision support to generate highly sensitive and specific alerts.

December 16 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Need for Integrated Data Enhancement and Analytics – Unifying Management of Healthcare Business Processes.” Sponsored by CitiusTech. Presenters: Jeffrey Springer, VP of product management, CitiusTech; John Gonsalves, VP of healthcare provider market, CitiusTech. Providers are driving consumer-centric care with guided analytic solutions that answer specific questions, but each new tool adds complexity. It’s also important to tap real-time data from sources such as social platforms, mobile apps, and wearables to support delivery of personalized and proactive care. This webinar will discuss key use cases that drive patient outcomes, the need for consolidated analytics to realize value-based care, scenarios to maximize efficiency, and an overview of CitiusTech’s integrated healthcare data enhancement and analytics platform.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Announcements and Implementations

SilverCloud Health launches Space from Diabetes, the first in a series of planned online diabetes care tools. Developed in partnership with content company Wiley, the tool offers Type 2 diabetes patients educational, lifestyle, and behavioral health strategies.

DirectTrust addresses capable of sharing PHI increase to nearly 1 million last year, a 133-percent jump over the year before. Over 58 million Direct-enabled transactions took place during the same timeframe. Nearly 50,000 healthcare organizations use the secure messaging technology.

PM and RCM vendor MedEvolve selects the RcxRules revenue cycle rules engine to automate its business office processes for faster payments and fewer denials.

People

WebPT promotes co-founder and COO Heidi Jannenga, PT to president.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

San Francisco-based HBI Solutions secures a $12.6 million Series A round led by Wonders Information Co. Ltd., a healthcare IT business based in Shanghai. The cash infusion will no doubt help the startup bring its predictive risk and analytic solutions to the Chinese market.

Walnut Creek Skin and Laser (CA) shareholders partner with Pouschine Cook Capital Management and Yukon Partners to create Golden State Dermatology, which will provide business and PM services to Walnut Creek. The new firm also aims to create a dermatology network in the Easy Bay area of San Francisco.

Telemedicine

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine informally launches a telemedicine service for sleep doctors. Set to officially debut January 4, the Tell a Sleep Doc tool includes Fitbit sleep data synchronization, which makes me wonder, after the bad rap wearables data has gotten, how many patients and physicians will actually take advantage of the data to improve sleep patterns.

Research and Innovation

An AAFP study finds that 33 percent of family physicians are in pursuit of value-based payment opportunities, while another 19 percent are developing value-based payment capabilities but hanging back from active pursuit until their peers act as guinea pigs first. Nearly 90 percent of surveyed practices will have to make hefty investments in healthcare IT to successfully make the value-based transition, a figure that doesn’t jive well with the majority of physicians who believe new payment models will increase their workload but won’t improve care.

Other

Pioneer High School teacher Don Bland adds electronic health record keeping to the school’s curriculum, courtesy of a statewide grant to expand career and technical education programs in Nevada schools. “Students are being trained on eClinicalWorks software, which is used by many physicians throughout Nevada, including the Carson Medical Group and other physicians’ offices that work with the Carson Tahoe Health system,” says Bland. “Students who have completed heath information management courses in high school can go right into a career, and it will lend itself to Western Nevada College’s health studies programs as well.”

Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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DOCtalk with Dr. Gregg 12/1/15

HIT Thanks

Of course, this time of year leads to reflection and an appreciation of life’s blessings. The gratitude may be overlooked through most of the year, but it’s nice we set aside a little time to remember all that we’ve been given and the cornucopia of wonders that enrich our daily existence, be they family and friends or things of much less importance … like HIT! I mean, really … it isn’t even in the top 10 of Most Valuable Things in Your Life, is it? Nevertheless, sometimes those littlest items can lead to such significant irritation that when they go well, or are removed from us, the joy experience can be significant. Thus, appreciating and giving thanks for such things should be an integral part of any serious HIT geek’s Thanksgiving.

Here are a few of mine this year, in no particular order (and mostly somewhat related to HIT):

• I’m grateful for Meaningful Use.
  • Yes, it’s been a pain in a whole bunch of ways, and if it doesn’t change directions radically, it may be time for it to go away and let the market take control again, but overall I believe it has done us a major favor getting so many more providers digitized, and getting the beginnings of connectivity and sharing catalyzed.
• I’m grateful that most notes I receive from other providers are now actually legible.
  • Likely related to the MU gratitude above.
  • I can remember not so very long ago when obtaining medical records was a crapshoot: You always wanted them, but more often than not, you couldn’t read them. Though they have their shortcomings – or “longcomings,” digital notes are at least legible.

• I’m grateful for Google and its impact on patient flow.
  • Remember the days when researching a patient issue required having tons of expensive, voluminous texts on hand through which you had to manually thumb, either dramatically slowing your patient flow or else leading to “let me get back to you after I do some research” conversations?
  • Nowadays – “Gimme a sec …”
• I’m grateful for engaged patients.
  • Admittedly, most of my patients are too young to be majorly engaged healthcare consumers, but their parents are becoming more and more so. And, though challenging at times, especially when Dr. Google has led them astray, it has brought some greater understanding, some better and deeper health conversations, and even helped to keep me on my toes striving to stay abreast of their knowledge.
• I’m grateful for an easy-to-use EHR.
  • So often I hear or read about folks bemoaning the drudgery of using their EMR/EHR. I’m happy that I never feel that way. (I admit that I wish my EMR was more “pediatric-friendly” and had a better patient portal, but its ease of use is compellingly powerful.)
• I’m grateful that there are other decent EMRs out there these days.
  • While I don’t look forward to the workflow chaos that switching EMRs can (will) bring, it’s nice to see that there are some newer gen, or newer versions of older gen, systems out there now that are showing much improved user experiences. (And if I find one that offers me a better portal and pediatric experience – who knows? – it may just be time to consider that switch. At least it won’t be as painful, having some experience with what to expect during such transitions)
• I’m grateful for the new “Peanuts” movie.
  • No real HIT relevance at all. Jus’ sayin’.

• I’m grateful that HIEs are starting to show signs of life.
• I’m grateful that cell phones are so powerful, I can work my browser-based EMR from anywhere.
  • Gone are the days when I had to go somewhere (my office, or the hospital) to retrieve information about a patient. I don’t even need to lug around a laptop or tablet. Today, I can do it from my son’s soccer match, during a family outing (when I’m not driving), or even from the friggin’ commode. (Sorry for the visual.)
• I’m grateful that I never have to search through a file room.
  • Remember that? What a pain!
• I’m grateful I’m not a turkey. (OK, at least not the feathered kind.)

From the trenches…

“Thanksgiving is an emotional time. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they see only once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often.” – Johnny Carson

Dr. Gregg Alexander, a grunt in the trenches pediatrician at Madison Pediatrics, is Chief Medical Officer for Health Nuts Media, an HIT and marketing consultant, and sits on the board of directors of the Ohio Health Information Partnership.

Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice  updates.
Contact us online.
Become a sponsor.