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 .
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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.
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.
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.
By Jeremy Guttman – In almost every speech given this year, Andy Slavitt, the Acting Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), has emphasized the priority of closing referral loops to strengthen patient care coordination.