Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)

Technology alone won't make successful implementations, a culture change has to follow suit, according to University of South Carolina's Elizabeth Regan.

Project aims to highlight interoperability successes and bring the community together to address challenges.

CHIME touts OpenNotes partnership, early success of National Patient ID Challenge; opening keynoter talks challenges and opportunities of patient-generated data.

The EHR vendor and analytics company sign an agreement to facilitate greater clinical insights for caregivers within the records system.

As part of its ongoing efforts to help healthcare provider organizations enhance their IT strategies and better realize value from their IT investments, HIMSS Analytics is unveiling at HIMSS16 the Next EMRAM Criteria and Value Score. EMRAM is HIMSS Analytics’ Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model. And Value Score is described by HIMSS Analytics as healthcare’s first international quality measurement for the value of health IT – building on the EMRAM and HIMSS’ Value Suite – to help providers optimize and use IT to improve clinical and financial outcomes and drive efficiencies in care. The Next EMRAM Criteria is a major update to EMRAM. HIMSS Analytics is shifting some existing technologies and practices down its seven-stage ladder, moving new ones in, better accounting for differences in the delivery of healthcare around the world, and adding significant new material centered on security. HIMSS Analytics is launching the Next EMRAM Criteria at HIMSS16, but added that it still is working through details on some of the revised criteria. “It’s been an exhaustive process: gathering feedback from the provider, administrative health and vendor communities around the world, but by and large the criteria is fundamentally inked. The intent is to create a true global comparison,” said Blain Newton, executive vice president at HIMSS Analytics. “The previous EMRAM was built 10 years ago, and while it became an effective tool and an industry standard – to the point where bond rating agencies ask for proof of Stage 7 – medicine is practiced differently in different parts of the world, and EMRAM initially was pretty specific to North America.” Newton said the Next EMRAM Criteria reflects the current state of the market, so things that were cutting edge 10 years ago now are moved down the scale and emerging practices and technologies have been moved in at different stages. For example, picture archiving and communication systems, which were not as commonplace 10 years ago as they are today, have been moved down to an earlier stage, while such things as clinician documentation and business continuity services have been given new emphasis. “And we’ve added a significant amount of material around privacy and security, which was a missing piece for us,” Newton said. “It’s a big update to the original criteria. But health systems performing well now will still be performing well with the rollout of the Next EMRAM Criteria.” Also at HIMSS16, HIMSS Analytics is officially launching Value Score, the next generation of several HIMSS-developed standards and resources that have served as health IT adoption models for providers over the last decade. EMRAM, for instance, has helped hospitals and clinical practices track and benchmark EHR adoption and utilization goals, and the HIMSS Health IT Value Suite and Value STEPS have provided a framework and vocabulary for providers to articulate strategies. As the market continues to evolve, Value Score will give providers a way to look at their entire organization and capture a comprehensive view of how they achieve value beyond the electronic health record, HIMSS Analytics said. “Value Score is the capstone to all of the offerings,” Newton said. “The other models focus on the adoption and implementation of technology. Value Score is focused on the optimization of that technology to achieve and realize value. It is an objective measure of discrete examples of realizing clinical, financial and patient engagement satisfaction, and realizing value by leveraging IT. We’re not only looking to get to Stage 7, but also to optimize and use IT to truly improve care, reduce costs and increase satisfaction. Value Score is a way to capture and normalize that concept.” While Value Score measures what is happening today, room has been made for innovation, Newton added, including a score specific to that topic. “We looked to the folks in the vanguard doing things we haven’t seen before,” he said. “The purpose of Value Score’s innovation score is to push the market forward, so eventually innovation filters down into the core model, which then can evolve and help those not in the vanguard to achieve more and raise the bar for everybody." HIMSS Analytics is in booth 1054 on the Exhibit Hall floor. Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT  This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute announced a plan to make it easy for individuals to access data in their electronic health records and share it for research that could improve care for their conditions.

The industry veteran also said that visionary CIOs will start to think about limiting EHR exposure to other tasks.

The Ottawa-based Rich said he’s most interested in learning about the challenges of getting patients engaged via new technologies and the quest to integrate digital health into their lives.

There are so many new medical devices today flooding the market, offering hope for a brighter tomorrow. But what good are they if they cannot be integrated into electronic health records or continuity of care efforts? “Integrated medical devices can contribute to efficient workflows and improved patient safety, but only if done with the strong collaboration between the technologists and the nursing end-users,” said Linda Burnes Bolton, chief nursing officer at Cedars-Sinai Health System. [Also: 21 awesome photos from past HIMSS conferences] Bolton will share Cedars-Sinai experience in a HIMSS16 session, The Next Frontier of Biomedical Device Integration, along with Jennifer Jackson, who directs clinical engineering and device integration at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. This session will describe how to successfully achieve device integration, as well as best practices for optimizing workflow, data entry and clinical documentation. The big potential is “integrated technology used to improve patient safety and documentation without compromising nursing workflow,” Bolton added. [Poll: What topics will define HIMSS16?] Despite significant advances in medical technologies, there is a consensus that a lack of corresponding improvements in the quality of healthcare delivery in the US is inhibiting progress. “High value medical device integration programs consist of strong executive leadership, a clear vision, and the commitment to quality and innovation from several stakeholders,” Jackson said. To that end, Jackson and Bolton also plan to address: unique staff structures needed to succeed, how traditional patient monitoring can be integrated to boost collaboration, and ways to tie a medical device integration program into published recommendations. “The Next Frontier of Biomedical Device Integration,” is scheduled for Monday, Feb. 29, 2016 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. at the Sands Expo Convention Center in Marcello 4404. Twitter: @HealthITNews This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

Don’t let the indestructible demeanor of nurses fool you: Like other members of the healthcare team, they too have technological difficulties. “The public and nurses who are not informaticians may have the impression that the quieter stance from nurses means usability issues don’t exist for them – in fact, user experience issues for nurses are severe,” said Nancy Staggers, a professor at the University of Maryland and an expert on clinical informatics whose experience includes serving as an IT executive on an electronic health records implementation at the U.S. Department of Defense. [Also: 21 awesome photos from past HIMSS conferences] Staggers will discuss the top healthcare IT user experience challenges for nurses at HIMSS16 during a roundtable session titled “Conversations on Nursing’s Health IT User Experiences,” at HIMSS16. Current usability problems include specifics like technology designed to fir nurses’ workflow and cognitive support, as well as broader issues such as needing a vision for health IT and strengthening the voice of nurses within provider organizations. Because of their role in the care process, nurses have unique IT user experience needs. “Nurses need a framework for thinking about UX and speaking about their health IT pain points so they can move toward solutions,” Staggers said. “UX is deeper than a simple focus on the computer interface; it is about designing technology to support workflow and the way nurses think and do work.” [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] How important are the issues nurses have with healthcare IT? Extremely, considering the sheer number of nurses and the crucial role nurses play in achieving successful health outcomes. “The U.S. alone has 3.4 million nurses; in fact, nurses are the largest group of health IT users globally, and they act as information hubs for patients in myriad settings beyond acute care, including long-term care, home health, community-based care, and telehealth,” Staggers said. “UX issues span all settings and are critical in the care of consumers, including special groups such as our aging population. Both the volume and the significance of current UX issues make addressing them an imperative to address in supporting nurses as knowledge workers.” Impractical IT user experiences for nurses can result in errors, patient safety issues, delayed decision making and huge inefficiencies, Staggers added. “Fixing UX issues is important to patients, nurses and the healthcare profession as a whole to improve safety and outcomes, enhance productivity, support critical thinking, and reduce inefficiencies,” Staggers said. The session, “Conversations on Nursing’s Health IT User Experiences,” is slated for Tuesday March 1, 2016 from 4-5 p.m. in the Sands Expo Convention Center Galileo 1004. Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.