Data Silos Are an Underappreciated Medical Tragedy
By Jeremy Guttman – Healthcare reform is very real. Only primary care practices who prepare now will be ready for big changes in reimbursement and quality metrics.
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Don’t Tumble Blindly as You Make Your Way Across the Continuum of Care
By Jeremy Guttman – Healthcare leaders who were once optimistic about value-based reimbursement models are becoming doubtful after seeing the performance of several programs. ACOs are achieving modest gains.
Getting Hands-On With Handoffs
By Jeremy Guttman – Problems with handoffs are a big deal in clinical practice. Defective handoffs lead to patient harm, treatment delays, inappropriate treatment, and longer stays in the hospital.
Health IT Issues that Deserve a Second Read – August 2016
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 thoughts on the issues of today. Here are the top read and shared guest posts of August.
Come Together, Right Now, Over Referrals
By Jeremy Guttman – Hospitals and Health Networks Magazine recently championed the concept of primary care physicians and specialists working closely together as partners, rather than continuing disconnected referral relationships.
Using Healthcare Data to Distinguish Your Practice From Your Competitors
By Jeremy Guttman – Journalist Fareed Zakaria is certain that those who prevail in tomorrow’s health care arena are the ones who figure out how to use the troves of data at their fingertips to distinguish themselves from competitors. “[W]hat you do with that data will probably be the key differentiator going forward,” Zakaria explains .
As Healthcare Digitizes, Medical Referrals Fall Far Behind
By Jeremy Guttman – Entirely paper-based healthcare is going the way of the dodo bird. Since 2008, the number of office-based physicians who have adopted electronic healthcare records (EHRs) has doubled from 40% to over 80%. In fact, the number of physicians using EHRs has actually quadrupled in the past 12 years.
High Performance Referral Management vs EHRs
By Jeremy Guttman – A common misconception is that an electronic health record (EHR) can close referral loops and provide high-performance referral management for primary care practices. However, not long after EHRs were implemented, users quickly realized that EHRs alone are not able to establish a pipeline that allows data to flow between PCPs and specialists from different organizations.
Why DSM is a Failure for Referral Management
By Jeremy Guttman – Contrary to what some EHR proponents believe, DSM by itself is an unpopular and ineffective solution when it comes to true interoperability, care coordination and referral management. It has almost no practical benefit for referral management beyond what primary care practices use it for right now: getting credit for Meaningful Use stage 2.