As a physician and long-time EHR user, I live and work in a world of discrete, narrative and non-narrative data. Notes that I or my colleagues have entered into the EHR, documents that have been scanned as image files or pdf documents into the document repository and discrete elements such as laboratory results. The data…

Guest Editorial The healthcare industry does not have a rich culture of innovation. While regulatory burdens, enterprise developers, and even generation gaps have taken heat for causing grief over the course of the Meaningful Use program (RIP), there is a legacy of change-resistance in medicine that goes much further than the last ten years. As…

A January 20, 2016 Health Affairs Article by Dawn M. Heisey-Grove titled Variation In Rural Health Information Technology Adoption And Use (Health Affairs, no.(2016): doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2015.0861) examines the differences between different provider groups in rural vs. urban settings. According to Heisey-Grove, initial adoption levels amongst rural providers was higher than their urban counterparts. “In 2013,…

Technology is transforming the practice of medicine and playing an ever-increasing role in clinician’s responsibilities. As a clinician and care provider, HIMSS wants to get your personal perspective on the impact and value health IT solutions bring to you on a daily basis. This survey explores impact of health IT on your job satisfaction, the…

Guest Editorial A recent survey of office-based physicians looked into the state of revenue cycle management (RCM) across various specialties, staff and locations. The RCM Survey Report called “What’s Happening Behind the Billing Office Door” evaluated several high-level metrics including first-pass clean-claim rate, net collection percentages, average days in A/R, and outstanding collections for 120+ days. The…

The recent release of the AmericanEHR Partners research report, Physicians Use of EHR Systems 2014 prompted a number of media responses, one of which questioned the process and methodology by which the data was collected from target populations in conjunction with professional society partners. In order to respond to the question of survey populations, I…

For those of you who spend time caring for patients, rather than keeping up to date on every proposed regulation that comes out of CMS, here are the highlights of one that directly affects you. On April 15, CMS published a proposed rule that makes dramatic changes in Stage 2 of Meaningful Use (MU). Essentially,…

From time to time at AmericanEHR  we receive books for review. Innovation with Information Technologies in Healthcare, edited by Lyle Berkowitz and Chris McCarthy, is one of those rare gems that bridges the gap between implementation and use of information technology, drawn from individuals’ experiences who have successfully applied those tools in clinical settings. At…

The American College of Physicians and the Federation of State Medical Boards released a new position paper available for free through the Annals of Internal Medicine. There are five key position statements — but please review the full paper as there is a rich discussion about each of these position statements. Position 1: Use of…

The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released a data brief titled “Use and Characteristics of Electronic Health Record Systems Among Office-based Physician Practices: United States, 2001–2012.” The brief reviews EHR adoption rates and the features that practices and individual clinicians are currently using. The study…

One of the major responsibilities and challenges for technology-based healthcare systems is to safeguard the privacy of Protected Health Information (PHI) and to limit access to appropriate individuals only. At the core of this problem is identity management. How does one know whether an individual accessing an EHR or patient portal has been properly credentialed, whether…