By Dr. Patrick Conway – CMS released the 2015 National Impact Assessment of Quality Measures Report (2015 Impact Report). The 2015 Impact Report demonstrates that the nation has made clear progress in improving the healthcare delivery system to achieve the three aims of better care, smarter spending, and healthier people.
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The AHRQ-funded Multi-Center Medication Reconciliation Quality Improvement Study (MARQUIS) has produced an implementation manual to help hospitals improve medication reconciliation practices.
By William Hyman – There has been much discussion about EHRs not meeting user’s needs. This often involves complaints of cumbersome data entry and/or data extraction, even within a single product and before ever getting to information exchange.
By Melissa Salm – Once hospital staff members and physicians became accustomed to EHR technology, they and their patients reaped the many benefits offered by switching from paper to digital health records.
By William van Doornik – Patient portals, mobile apps, secure text messaging, and email are increasing collaboration between providers and patients in new ways. Meaningful Use Stage 3 proposed requirements will likely be a driving force in determining how patient generated data (PGD) will be interpreted, used, and integrated into electronic health records (EHRs).
By Kathryn Williamson – Implementing a new patient management system is a huge investment in terms of time and dollars. It can also be very stressful on all involved. Changes in the healthcare climate often contribute to an organization’s decision to implement a new system in an effort to meet current and future healthcare mandates.
The Federal Health Architecture (FHA) has been working closely with the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT (ONC) and other federal partners to…
By Rich Rutherford – Aligning incentive and quality programs with existing Accountable Care Organization (ACO) agreements is essential to improving patient outcomes and confidently negotiating private payer risk-based contracts. I started installing EHRs in 1999 with expected benefits of prescription legibility and reduced chart pulls.
By William Hersh – As in all complex endeavors, the push for a healthcare system underpinned by structured and interoperable electronic health record (EHR) data has turned out to be more complicated than we might have anticipated when acceleration of EHR adoption was begun about a decade ago.