- In the recent budget submitted by President Obama, it includes adding 1,054 agents to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to enforce new healthcare regulations. (this is first part of original plan to add 11,000 agents to IRS)
- HIPAA Data Breach Update:
o Charleston Area Medical Center of West Virginia announced that it inadvertently exposed personal protected patient information on its website. The breach impacted 3,655 patients and exposed them to potential identity theft, as the info included their social security numbers. Patient data on the website had been accessed more than 90 times, with some of the site’s hits formcing from Indian and Germany.
o St. Francis Health System of Tulsa, Oklahoma announced that its HIPAA breach impacted 84,000 patients, after a computer was stolen from one of its outpatient facilities.
- More HIPAA oversight? Senator Stuart Smalley (aka Al Franken of Saturday Night Live fame) of Minnesota was named the ranking member of a new U.S. Senate committee on Privacy, Technology and the Law. His duties will include; “oversight of laws and policies governing the collection, protection, use and dissemination of commercial information…”
- In new statistics released by RedSpin Inc., and IT security audit firm regarding HIPAA breaches:
o Private health information of more than 6 million people has been compromised since 8/2009
o Breaches occurred in all but 7 states in the U.S.
o Average breach affected about 27,000 people
o Average of 82 days passed between discovery of breach, and when it was reported to federal government (law requires notification within 60 days)
o 6 out 10 breaches were intentional and malicious
- Imprivata released EHR survey results of hospital executives:
o 75% claim meaningful use (investing in EHR systems that qualify for federal stimulus dollars) is the top budget priority in 2011
o 54% cite physician adoption of EHR to be greatest challenge to meeting meaningful use rules
o 48% believe that password management issues will slow physician adoption of EHR systems
o 87% say that the time it takes for an EHR system to access a patient record affects physician satisfaction
o 73% say that EHR access time impacts patient care
o 50% report that at least 26% of physicians are accessing EHR remotely
o 65% have deployed personal devices for physicians, or have plans to deploy by end of 2012
o 49% have virtual desktop infrastructure or have plans to implement by 2012
- Canon now shipping a new option that allows it to sell one of its color copiers as an output device for MRI reports, radiology reports and CT scans:
o Option is called the Canon imagePRESS Server T1 V2 Controller
o Works with Canon imagePRESS C1+ color copier (single drum 14ppm unit) that is already equipped a Canon CYPHER PS Print Server
o The T1 V2 processes DICOM (digital imaging and communication in medicine) data, which is used in radiology systems (instead of traditional PCL or PS)
- Does healthcare vertical really buy biometric units? Genesis Healthcare of Zanesville, Ohio announced it is investing in biometric finger vein readers from Lumidigm. Reasons:
o Coupled with BIO-key software, it integrates into most EHR software, including Epic, Allscripts and others.
o Helps compliancy with new HIPAA regulations
o “Because skin dryness is so prevalent in the healthcare industry, due in part to constant hand washing, traditional fingerprint sensors can produce up to a 20% failure rate” according to Bill Spence, VP of Lumidigm
- Sutter Health gives out more details on its Epic EHR implementation:
o Chain of 26 hospitals in California
o Originally had systems from IBM (MedSeriesIV) and Siemens, awarded a contract to Epic in 2007 for $500 million
o After originally putting the brakes on the project, it announced it would spend an additional $400 million to complete Epic EHR project by 2015.
- University Hospitals of Ohio announced it awarded its EHR project to Allscripts, for its Sunrise Enterprise Acute Care EHR version 5.5, in all 7 of its hospitals.
- Siemens Healthcare announced it won more Soarian EHR contracts:
o Baptist St. Anthony’s Health System of Amarillo, Texas
o Peconic Bay Medical Center of Riverhead, New York
o Children’s Hospital of New Orleans, LA
o MaineGeneral Health of Maine
- McKesson, an EHR vendor, announced it won a contract from Parrish Medical Center of Titusville, FL.
- eClinicalWorks announced it won an EHR contract from Riverside HealthCare of Chicago, Illinois.
- ImageSoft, a dealer in Michigan, announced it has won document management contracts (with Hyland OnBase software) from Duke University and Henry Ford Hospital.
- According to a survey on EHRs conducted by the University of Chicago, 78% of Americans favor the use of electronic medical records systems. Other data:
o 59% believe it will reduce costs
o 72% support sharing of data between providers
o 80% favor electronic prescriptions
o 79% believe that access to their personal health records (PHR) on-line would keep them better informed
o 48% are concerned about privacy of records
o 64% believe that the benefits outweigh privacy concerns
o 44% are not willing to pay more to get benefits of electronic records
o 57% do not believe that use of electronic records would impact their choice of physician
- Record Nations, a national network of document scanning service provider, published results of survey:
o Rate of medical record scanning grew 22% in 2010
o Scanning requests to get space back grew 11%
o Requests to scan from businesses that were closing was up 8%
o Requests to scan due to “green” concerns up 4%
- Survey conducted by Oce’ reveals the following about document management systems:
o 30% were only managing paper records
o 81% said it improves process of filing and retrieval
o 47% able to use in business process workflows
o 40% said collaboration was easier
o 77% use to improve processes and operational efficiencies
o 72% use to reduce paper and save storage space
o 50% use to comply with regulations
o 21% use to increase competitive edge
- Palisades Medical Center of New Jersey, which had chosen Siemens Soarian as its EHR, announced that it chose DB Technology’s RASi software as its document management system.
-=Greetings from Sandy Hook=-
Showing posts with label IBM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IBM. Show all posts
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Weekend Document Imaging Notes 8/22/10
o work hours are up
o increases in eDiscovery workloads
o increase in litigation support
o many plan to add staff
o increases in budget for technology purchases
- IBM announced it will offer healthcare IT in the cloud working with Aetna Insurance through its ActiveHealth unit. It will compete with similar offerings from Practice Fusion, AthenaHealth and eClinicalWorks.
- Prompted by the CBS report in April on copier data security, a newspaper in Europe, called News of the World, did its own investigation of copier hard drives. The newspaper purchased a number of trade-in copiers and found:
o NATO briefing notes
o Details of a bank account belonging to BAE systems (a large defense contractor)
o The information was found on the hard drive of a Canon imageRUNNER
- Fujitsu launched a free service that lets individuals use their mobile phones to keep personal health records. The cell phones have sensors to record weight, body fat and blood pressure.
- Fujitsu and the University of Tokyo announced that they have jointly built a supercomputer system that can development drugs to treat cancer and metastasis.
- The Forrester Group reported that its survey of healthcare IT professionals revealed that 75% had their systems go down over the last year. 61% stated it took more than 1 hour to recover from the crash.
- Epson announced a new print driver, called ESC/P-R, that will allow some of its color inkjet printers to print from Royal Phillips ultrasound equipment in the healthcare industry
- Recent data on healthcare reveals:
o currently there are roughly 750,000 healthcare establishments in the U.S.
6,013 hospitals
918,000 physicians
• 67% affiliated with hospital
• 60% have no HER
• Less than 25% of doctors prescribe drugs electronically
o In addition to medical records and forms, the most common paper documents per department are:
Customer Records include contracts, forms, authorizations, contact reports and email
Human Resources include resumes, contracts, expense reports, vacation requests and reviews
Legal includes contracts, e-discovery and auditing
Purchasing includes purchase orders, receiving slips, invoices and confirmations
Product management includes designs, drawings, data sheets and contacts
o The most common reasons why they will invest in technology:
81.5% want to increase productivity
67.7% want to lower costs
60% want to address security requirements
o Only 40% of those surveyed had some type of document management system
- Recent AMA survey shows that it is not uncommon for medical practices to report a gross collection rate of only 60% or less. This means that for every $1.00 of medical services billed, the physician may only receive 60 cents. Other findings:
o gross charges denied by payers has grown to 14-18%
o denied, rejected, resubmitted and underpaid claims can costs as much as $100,000 per month
o practice can lose as much as $75,000 per year in denied claims that are never resubmitted
o many practices do not resubmit up to 50% of their claims
o underpayment of claims is as much as 35% lower than contracted amount
- In a recent healthcare industry trade magazine, in section titled “The Healthcare IT Guy”, recent reminders were given for doctors to qualify for federal funds for implementation of an electronic health records (EHR) system: (of which MFPs, scanners, document management and middleware can play a role)
o If starting implementation in 2012, will be eligible for full payments from Medicare ($44K over 5 years)
o Can start as late as 201 to get full payments from Medicaid ($63K+ over 6 years)
o For hospitals, payments include a base amount of $2 million, plus $200 per patient, starting with the hospital’s 1,150th patient discharged and ending with No. 23,000, beginning in 2011 fiscal year.
Both doctors and hospitals that cannot “demonstrate meaningful use of EHR” by beginning of the 2015 fiscal year will be penalized
- As the healthcare industry “digitizes”, one of the concerns is the amount of data storage that will be required. In a recent article in “Healthcare Technology”, the data collected by medical imaging (radiology) equipment was detailed:
o “Prior to the mid-90s, most of the scanning was only two slices. Now 3D visualization is a must-have application and a primary diagnostic tool. This has had a significant impact on the medical imaging industry. For example, if you took a head and neck scan in 1994, it was about 21 slices. Today, a single head and neck scan is 240 slices.”
o Formats/acronyms used in radiology are; PACS (picture archiving and communication system) and DICOM (digital imaging and communications in medicine)
- Four different insurance companies announced that they will offer financial incentives to physicians and hospitals for meeting federal EHR meaningful use rules:
o Aetna
o Highmark
o UnitedHealth
o WellPoint
- EHR provider, Epic, announced contracts with:
o Tucson Medical Center
o Kaiser
- Two senators attempt to expand who can get the HITECH subsidies from Medicare and Medicaid:
o Sheldon Whitehouse & Jack Reed of Rhode Island introduced bill
o Want monies to be available for EHR implementation by mental health, behavioral health and substance abuse treatment professionals
o Currently, psychiatrists are eligible, but not psych hospitals, clinical social workers and substance abuse programs
- Another healthcare data security issue. Someone broke into a Texas allergy clinic and stole four PCs containing personal health information (PHI). It cost the clinic $15,000 to send the mandatory breach notifications letters to its 25,000 patients, far more than the cost of replacing the computers.
- And another. Four Massachusetts community hospitals are investigating how thousands of patient records ended up in a pile at a local dump site that was 20 feet wide and 20 feet long. A newspaper photographer discovered the records when he was dumping his own trash, and notified the 4 hospitals; Milford, Holyoke, Carney and Milton.
- The Department of Health & Human Services announced that in 2007, Medicare overpaid physicians by $13.8 million for incorrectly coded claims.
- Eclipsys (which was just acquired by Allscripts) announced it won an EHR contract from Isabel Healthcare of Falls Church, VA.
- Allscripts, maker of EHR software, announced it has hired former U.S. Attorney, Ken Alexander, as its new Executive VP and General Counsel. It also announced it won a contract from the Iowa Health System.
- According to an Institute of Medicine study, 1.5 million Americans are injured each year and 7,000 die from preventable medication errors.
-=Greetings from the Highlands=-
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)