Top Guest Posts of the Month
One of the ways that HITECH Answers is different from other media sites is the sense of community. The thought leaders in our community are good about sharing their thought on the issues of today. We publish at least seven guest posts a week now, Monday through Thursday. In case you missed some, here are the top ten read and shared guest posts of the month. You can also read previous month’s Top Ten Lists. Thank you for contributing and reading.
Three Ways Providers Should Engage the Healthcare Consumer
By Vern Davenport, President and Equity Partner, Medfusion
A wave of consumerism is taking hold in healthcare, affecting provider-patient relationships across the country. Escalating health plan deductibles, the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces, and most importantly, advances in information technology are causing patients to think more like consumers in regards to how and where their healthcare dollars are spent and if they’re truly receiving value for their money. Continue reading…
HIPAA Audits Delayed
By Matt Fisher, Attorney and chair of the Health Law Group at Mirick, O’Connell, DeMallie & Lougee, LLP.
The new round of HIPAA audits expected to start this fall has been delayed. The announcement was made by Linda Sanches, a senior adviser for the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) at the Department of Health and Human Services, while speaking at the Health Information and Management Systems Society’s (HIMSS) Privacy and Security Forum. In a theme somewhat common from recent government initiatives, the delay is caused by a web portal not being ready. Continue reading…
Remote Patient Monitoring: Can it Reduce Healthcare Costs?
By Eugene Borukhovich, SoftServe, Inc.
According to a recent study by the Berg Insight, the remote patient monitoring market is expected to grow to €19.4B ($24.9 billion) by 2019. It’s an astounding number if you consider that the same report put the current market at €4.3B ($5.5 billion) at the end of 2013.
Telemedicine, which is a portion of the overall estimated market, has been a topic of discussion for years, so what has changed so dramatically? Continue reading…
HIPAA Penalties Sting Outside the Healthcare Field Too
By Bob Chaput, CEO of Clearwater Compliance
Most companies in the U.S. likely feel that Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) violations are strictly a healthcare industry concern. But any company with a self-funded group health plan (GHP) is now subject to HIPAA regulations, and the penalties imposed for violations are getting too costly to ignore. Continue reading…
What’s the Ice Bucket Challenge Got to Do with the CHS Breach?
By David Finn, Health IT Officer at Symantec
Let me start out by saying that I’m hot (it is Houston in September), need a vacation (my fault) and am cranky (a result of being hot and needing a vacation).
It all started Monday, August 18th. I was actually at one of our customers who spent about 10 minutes telling me that healthcare would not be a targeted industry. Our local account representative and I spent about 10 minutes going through the data, the reports, and the warnings. He responded by saying they had a good handle on security. About 5 minutes after leaving and really only a block or two down the road, I received the first ‘breaking alert’ on the CHS breach. Continue reading…
The Evolution of Health IT
By Eric Venn-Watson MD, MBA SVP – Clinical Transformation at AirStrip
Health IT is often considered a silent partner in healthcare – not seen by patients, but a critical part of the system. As we celebrate National Health IT Week, it’s important to realize that although health IT already has a long history, the constant and rapid evolution of this space continues to transform the market. Information has been collected and stored for years, but the promise of clinical decision support has us at the cusp of all this information becoming valuable in new and innovative ways. Continue reading…
Keys to the Health Data Kingdom
By Michael Sherling, Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder of Modernizing Medicine, Inc.
Adoption rates for electronic health record (EHR) systems continue to soar, and every day mountains of patient information are turned into digital health data. This amassment of digital data precludes a huge opportunity for data compilation, analysis and subsequent extraction of insights into best practices for patient treatment and care. Despite the fact that the technology exists to compile and parse this data, and that the industry as a whole stands on the precipice of meaningful adoption and use, there are a couple of key ingredients that are missing. While patient-specific unstructured data will have some uses, insight extraction is not one of them. The ability to collect data in a structured manner while also ensuring patient privacy by de-identifying it are essential steps to realizing the full potential of the EHR systems in healthcare. Continue reading…
e-Visits Save $5 billion Globally This Year
By Donna Cusano, Editor In Chief of Telehealth & Telecare Aware
Deloitte and Towers Watson obviously disagree on the savings from eVisits (Deloitte) and telemedicine (Towers Watson). Deloitte’s study of eVisits projects a global savings of $5 billion in 2014. Towers Watson is estimating $6 billion in 2015 from US employers alone if there is full employee utilization of telemedicine. Deloitte is also more transparent in its estimating, for example on the $50-60 billion total addressable market for eVisits in ‘developed countries’. I don’t see a major difference in definitions between the two; Deloitte defines eVisits as video consults plus the forms, questionnaires and photos that have become part of telehealth, but not the vital signs monitoring part. Perhaps our readers, looking at both more closely, can discern, or confirm that Towers Watson has too rosy a picture? Continue reading…
September HIT Standards Committee Meeting
By John Halamka, MD
The September HIT Standards Committee was one of the most important meetings in the history of the group. We heard pivotal reports from the NWIN Power Team about Query/Response standards as well as from the JASON Task Force. Together they gave us important guidance to accelerate FHIR, REST, and OAuth, aligning healthcare query/response standards with the technology approaches used in every other industry. We were also advised to polish existing CCDA standards in the short term while working on the longer term FHIR initiatives. Continue reading…
Patient Consumerism and Empowerment 2.0
By Justin Barnes
As I continue to travel around the country and speak to healthcare practitioners, it’s becoming clear that the realities of patient consumerist behavior coupled with engagement incentives are leading caregivers to more actively pursue innovative solutions and long-term strategies. And one main point I continue to make is that it is increasingly important to understand that the empowered patient is a benefit to your practice and not a hindrance, especially when market forces are leading patients in that direction. Continue reading…