Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)

For meaningful use and MACRA, the government uses an IEEE description of interoperability that pre-dates today’s crop of EHRs. Whether or not that will carry the healthcare industry into the future is a matter of some debate.

Leidos, which along with Cerner and Accenture, last year won a $9 billion contract to provide the Department of Defense with a new electronic health record at DoD facilities worldwide, has recently positioned itself to gain even more healthcare business.

Under the settlement, the EHR-vendor will be closely monitored by the FTC for compliance and liable for up to $40,000 in penalties for any violation.

The Public Health Information Technology Maturity Index can help officials understand how well they are using IT and data to respond to outbreaks and epidemics. 

The framework will make interoperability work happening today widespread as more and more EHR vendors, HIEs and providers join the network, according to an Epic executive.

This past Friday, Karen DeSalvo, MD, officially stepped down as National Coordinator, passing the baton to her second-in-command, Vindell Washington, MD. The former principal deputy national coordinator has been with ONC since January 2016.

The promise of genomics and personalized care are closer than many realize. But clinical systems and EHRs are not ready yet. While policymakers and innovators play catch-up, here’s a look at what to know now. 

DeSalvo made her way from New Orleans to Washington and while serving as National Coordinator, she realigned ONC and delivered visionary strategic plans for interoperability and health IT, before President Obama nominated her to a key HHS post.

People often ask me how I find time to write a weekly blog with a big, busy CIO job. I tell them all the same thing – it’s a discipline. I try to start early in the week with an idea, draft it one night, come back to it the next night to finalize and then post it on Thursday or Friday morning. Topics are often timely; something strikes me and I tell myself “that will blog”. I add the idea to my running list. This week it included tips on doing presentations for executive groups, personal organization challenges and tips, and what’s possible to accomplish as an interim leader in just 6 months. But this week I had as many as five new ideas but no time to start writing any of them. By Thursday night if I haven’t settled on a topic and started, I’m in trouble. Taking time to write may compete with critical work I need to finish up by the end of the week. This week was one of those weeks. This week started out with a bang.  By 9AM Monday, I was juggling 4 different issues. A system issue after a scheduled weekend service pack upgrade caused problems in our revenue cycle systems. There was an escalated physician report of an access problem over the weekend. Working with my team we could move all but one to closure by the end of the day. It was a week full of meetings and follow-ups squeezed in between. And managing the endless stream of emails. But it was an atypical week with late afternoon/evening meetings and dinners with colleagues every night. This kind of evening schedule impacts one of my other disciplines – nightly exercise. I just have to find the time when I can. We dealt with dissatisfied and frustrated physicians over EMR issues – some that we thought were behind us. We finished prep for our monthly executive IT Steering Committee which included some critical infrastructure presentations on a significant data center investment and disaster recovery planning. This is what a week looks like for CIOs and their leadership team. So the most recent blog topics I have added to my running list will have to wait for future weeks. My blog writing discipline continues. I probably need to go back to my original approach when I started blogging over 2 years ago – decide the topic on the weekend and start the draft on Sunday night before the week kicks into high gear. But this week was one of “those weeks.” Blog originally posted on www.sueschade.com.  

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