There’s a big gap between what physicians thought they could do, and what they were eligible to do, to collect meaningful use incentives last year, according to a new study, which appears in the May issue of Health Affairs.

The study shows that 91 percent of physicians nationwide were eligible for federal electronic medical record (EMR) incentives in 2011. However, only 10 percent intended to apply for the program.

That number was on the low side of what the federal government had anticipated. The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services had estimated that 10 percent to 36 percent of Medicare-eligible professionals and 15 percent to 47 percent of Medicaid-eligible professionals would demonstrate meaningful use in 2011.

According to the authors, among physicians intending to apply for meaningful use, about 21 percent were ready with the 10 core capabilities. Even in the state with the highest degree of readiness - Wisconsin - only 32 percent of physicians were ready with the 10 core capabilities.

The authors say the low level of readiness illustrates the challenges in meeting the federal schedule for financial incentives. Healthcare practices have support options, however. Your IT provider can help you if you need assistance preparing your meaningful use.

The key to patient-centered care - a concept that continues to evolve - is the relationship between physician and patient. Finding the balance between patient engagement and information technology, however, can be challenging.

IT has benefited healthcare practices in many ways. For example, it allows patients to service themselves when it comes to transactional exchanges, such as scheduling appointments and reviewing bills.

There are fears, however, that IT can also create distance between the practitioner and patient, reducing face-to-face contact. Here are three tips to ensure that doesn’t happen:

1. Accept that patient-centered IT initiatives help the physician. Small practices need to adopt the same features as their competitors, including large practices as well as low-cost primary care providers such as CVS and Walgreens.

2. Determine your needs. Patient-centered IT practices vary. Some practices use patient portals to optimize patient input. Others use email, text, video and mobile apps to create an impact across a broader spectrum of their patients' health. You’ll need to find what works best for your patient. Younger patients, for example, might prefer text messaging; older patients might prefer email.

3. Reconsider your reimbursement model. IT advancements have patients emailing, text messaging and video conferencing their doctors without payment. That puts pressure on the physician to do more for less. This is a problem with your business model, not your IT. You can't offer services that eradicate half of your service visits or you'll bankrupt your practice.

For details, please see “Five Keys to IT and the Physician-Patient Relationship.”

With the adaptation of Stage 2, companies operating in the electronic medical records will shift their focus from the capture to exchange of health information. One industry insider has recommended 10 things your EMR needs to be truly interoperable.

1. Single sign-on (SSO). Applications tend to proliferate, and if you don't allow people to switch between these applications using a common login and password, users will get frustrated and give up.
2. Context transitions. As applications grow, and you need to integrate them into an EMR, SSO won’t be enough, because you’ll still lose the “active patient or task" being performed. You’ll also need to provide for the transition of context between applications.
3. Widget publishing. EHRs often have hundreds of functions, and if some are exportable or publishable as widgets, they become much easier to integrate into new user interfaces in the future.
4. Widget consumption. EMRs will become more like containers of cross-application functionality than innate functionality, so consuming widgets will be a basic requirement.
5. Mash-ups. EMRs should allow access to their content through the content management interoperability services (CMIS) standard, thereby allowing users to unlock content they have in various health records.
6. Customizable dashboards. EMRs should provide dashboards that can be tailored by organization, user role, or even user.
7. Interactive Voice Response (IVR). IVR, which allows an EMR to interact with users through phones and other voice systems, such as Skype, will improve collaboration with patients and other physicians who aren’t at a computer.
8. Voice recognition. This will help users conduct EMR tasks more efficiently.
9. Natural language understanding. Because most EMR data is entered by humans, an EMR must integrate with systems that can convert the spoken word or typed text to structured data.
10. Customizable data import and export. A good EMR must allow customizable importing and exporting of simple lists in common formats, such as Excel, CSV and XML.

In order for your IT department to be successful, you need a strategic plan that will both optimize your workflow and help to define your practice’s needs. The well thought out and executed plan will exhibit a focus on the experiences of your staff and patients. Here are five considerations that can help you develop your strategic IT plan.

1. Improve the patient experience. Many healthcare practitioners consider the patient experience a major challenge, yet don’t give much thought to how IT can improve it. Consider what you can do electronically to support patients, whether they're in your facility or not. Electronic forms? Email and text message reminders and confirmations? Kiosks?
2. Consider best practices. Technology can help you get to know your patients better. The Web, for example, can be used as a first point of engagement. Ask a few questions of visitors, then tailor your responses to their needs. A patient interested in a first consultation would receive different information than one preparing for his or her first round of cancer treatment.
3. Don’t forget the staff! Your staff needs successful workflows to interact effectively with patients. Common errors are multiple devices and different logins. Keep in mind how clinicians work to develop efficiencies. Your staff needs to be able to provide clinical care without being tied to a PC.
4. Use social media. Social media often isn’t included in IT planning, as it’s usually more of a marketing consideration. Without thinking about how it will be used, it will become difficult for patients and staff to have a singular experience. Your IT department needs to work with other departments to develop a social media plan that will yield a consistent presentation to the end user.
5. Use integrative planning. Typically, IT does its strategic planning in isolation. Ideally though, IT would plan with other departments. This “integrative planning” allows for a consistent plan supported by all parts of the practice.

Do you need to save money on your IT costs? If so, here are five things you can discuss with your IT provider: be practical, be creative, invest in training, consider enterprise-directed IT, and consider long-term costs and benefits. Below we discuss each in more detail.

1. Be practical. Extend the life of existing systems to help you get the most out of their value.

2. Be creative. Think outside the box. You might allow doctors and nurses to use their own smart phones and tablets on the job, foster development of your own apps, and leverage inexpensive cloud services, such as Google Apps.

3. Invest in training. It's easy to underestimate the cost savings associated with training—and the easier a system is to use, the less training you'll need to provide.

4. Consider enterprise-directed IT. Much of the technology that's interesting and cost effective right now isn't consumer directed – it's enterprise directed.

5. Consider long-term costs and benefits. With new technologies popping up left and right, choosing the right ones is critical. Those that protect against data breaches, for example, may be the most important given that a recent ID Experts and Ponemon Institute report found data breaches in U.S. healthcare organizations have cost providers more than $6 billion a year.
   

   Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

Most medical practices that implement Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) see a significant financial return on investment (ROI). Here are five ways that happens: You can see more patients; you'll reduce missed appointments; your claims processing will be more efficient; you'll spend less on hard technology costs; and you'll improve reimbursements. Below we discuss each in more detail.

1. You can see more patients. Once you've implemented an EMR and established good work flows, you'll spend less time documenting, allowing you more time to see more patients.

2. You'll reduce missed appointments. Cancelations and no-shows are key performance indicators. An EMR can reduce them by issuing appointment reminders, and a reduction in missed appointments can improve your bottom line.

3. Your claims processing will be more efficient. Once you've implemented an EMR, you'll spend less time filing, faxing, and retrieving charts and moving documents, which will allow claims to be processed faster.

4. You'll spend less on hard technology costs. Once you've implemented an EMR, your technology will be centralized, so you’ll make fewer ad hoc purchases. Moreover, if your EMR is cloud-based, you'll spend less on equipment overall.

5. You’ll improve reimbursements. Many EMRs have alerts that make sure you're using the correct document to satisfy reimbursement requirements—and improved legibility is a bonus.
   

   Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.