Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)

Care coordination, quality measurement, patient engagement and population health management strategies are routinely used by physicians with electronic health records who participate in accountable care organizations or patient-centered medical homes, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Managed Care. Aiming to find out whether doctors using health IT and working within new reimbursement models were actually employing improved care processes, researchers Jennifer King, Vaishali Patel, Eric Jamoom and Catherine DesRoches examined cross-sectional data on office-based physicians from the 2012 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey Physician Workflow Survey. "Early indicators suggest strong physician participation in initiatives to support health IT adoption and to reform healthcare payment and delivery," they said. "However, evidence on whether provider participation in these initiatives has translated to better care delivery is just beginning to emerge. "Although studies prior to HITECH and the ACA found health IT and external reporting or payment incentives to be associated with a higher likelihood of performing these care processes," they added, "they are performed at low rates even when these factors are in place." [Also: 4 surprising benefits of PCMH] King et al. examined how ACO and PCMH docs used their EHRs for 14 specific processes in four categories: population management, quality measurement, patient communication and care coordination. They found that those factors were independently associated with better processes: "Physicians who were using EHRs in combination with participation in ACO or PCMH initiatives had the highest likelihood of routinely performing the care processes." Indeed, those docs "were between 6 and 22 percentage points more likely to routinely perform the care processes than physicians with EHRs alone." While fewer than half (44 percent) reported routinely doing quality measurement, substantial majorities of docs said they routinely engage in care coordination (89 percent), patient communication (69 percent), and population management (67 percent). "Given the cross-sectional nature of this study, these results do not establish a causal relationship between payment reform, EHR use, and these care processes," researchers said. "Nonetheless, this finding is consistent with other research that shows that healthcare providers are most likely to perform these care processes when practicing in a payment environment that incentivizes and supports such care." Moreover, many U.S. physicians are still "not performing these processes routinely," researchers said. "Our analysis highlights several specific areas – including population management processes that require the aggregation and analysis of individual patient data and communication with patients and other care team members – where additional technology and policy supports may be important to facilitate wider adoption of these activities." Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

Big screens in every hospital unit show quality and safety indicators for doctors, nurses, patients and family members. Children’s has reduced urinary tract infections while improving medication safety and time to treatment.

A U.S. district court jury in Wisconsin has found in Epic Systems' favor, awarding the EHR giant $940 million in damages in its trade secrets lawsuit against Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services. The massive settlement seems likely to be reduced on appeal.

Starting in 2019, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, will change how they pay physicians in a profound way. Unfortunately, the details are complicated and confusing, and many of the particulars have yet to be worked out, which has led many healthcare leaders to glaze over the details and focus on more immediate concerns.

The bill gives the Veterans Affairs money to digitize claims processing, advance telemedicine, and modernize its electronic health record software, but only once it proves interoperability with the DoD and private sector. 

The diagnoses of 27.3 percent of patients with depression and 27.7 percent of patients with bipolar disorder were missing from their primary care electronic health records, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association has found.

Kaiser Permanente this week launched a new database that enables researchers to examine participants' DNA in conjunction with environmental and behavioral health.

The potential next EHR would more closely resemble modern interfaces such as Google and Facebook and leverage FHIR, if the VA indeed opts to move away from VistA. Undersecretary David Shulkin said the department is evaluating the best way forward. 

Allscripts is the top-ranked EHR vendor among medical centers of more than 250 beds, according to a new Black Book report released today. Cerner topped the list for medium-sized community hospitals with 101-250 beds, and Evident/CPSI was the best among small and rural hospitals with fewer than 100 beds.

Cloud-based athenahealth is expanding its portfolio to include machine learning and artificial intelligence with its acquisition of analytics startup Arsenal Health. Arsenal's Smart Scheduling tool has already been effective with athenahealth's providers, officials said. The acquisition, terms of which were not disclosed, will move Arsenal from a third-party vendor to a native capability available for all athenahealth's customers through its athenaCoordinator network. athenahealth also sees value as a potential "on-ramp to the machine learning, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence space in healthcare," said Doran Robinson, vice president of athenaCoordinator, in a press statement. In the future, athenahealth's officials say they hope the acquisition will accelerate the company's analytics and AI capabilities, broadening insights and enhancing offerings for its 74 million patient records. "The prospect of building on Arsenal Health’s technology and combining it with our own valuable data to positively impact care and expand the power of our network is extremely compelling," said Robinson. Arsenal Health was athenahealth's first investment through its More Disruption Please initiative, which drives decisions based on three pillars: the MDP Accelerator, athenahealth Marketplace and MDP Network. "The company is a testimonial to what we’re trying to do with our "More Disruption Please" program – provide young health tech companies the opportunity to develop and scale with athenahealth’s support and resources," he added. "By joining athenahealth, we believe we can accelerate our growth while effectively testing and advancing our predictive analytics technology," said Arsenal Health CEO Chris Moses in a statement. "To date, our success lies in our ability to track client performance, learn the intricacies of how providers work and ultimately predict their needs."