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.

Stage 2 is coming, and the focus of the electronic medical record (EMR) community is shifting from the capture, to the exchange of health information. According to one industry insider, when it comes to true interoperability, here are 10 things your EMR may need:

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.

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.

Wondering what the most-discussed health care IT topics were in 2011—and what they'll likely be in 2012? ID Experts compiled expert opinions and found them to be much the same: mobile devices, patient privacy rights, and data breaches. Below are several of the items from ID Experts’ top 10 list, and additional items and details are available here.

• Mobile devices could create problems due to data breach risks—because while 81 percent of health care providers use mobile devices to collect, store, and transmit secure information, only 49 percent secure the devices.
• Class-action lawsuits will rise as patients sue health care providers for failing to secure their personal information, creating significant risks and increasing costs for organizations affected by these lawsuits.
• As more health care providers use social media, the exposure of personal information will increase, forcing health care providers to develop social media plans to prevent employees exposing patient information through personal social networking sites.
• Economic realities will force health care providers to outsource many functions including billing to third parties and business associates, and that will create weak links in data privacy and security.
• The use of mobile devices—tablets and smartphones—will continue to grow in the industry, meaning health care providers will need to balance usability with security.

Government's incentives for electronic medical record (EMR) adoption could pay off in improved quality of care, according to a new study. It found that patients in physician practices that used EMRs got better care and had better outcomes than those in physician practices that used paper records.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, looked at 500 primary care physicians treating 27,000 adults with diabetes.

According to the study, those patients in physician practices that used EMRs were significantly more likely to have care that met certain standards as well as positive outcomes than those in physician practices that used paper records.

Standards included timely measurements of blood sugar, management of kidney problems, eye examinations, and vaccinations for pneumonia. Positive outcomes included meeting national benchmarks for blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol control, as well as achieving a non-obese body mass index and avoidance of tobacco use.

Almost 51 percent of patients at EMR-based practices received care that met all of the endorsed standards—compared to only 7 percent of patients at paper-based practices. And almost 44 percent of patients in EMR-based practices met at least four of five outcome standards—compared to just 16 percent of patients at paper-based practices.

According to the study, these findings were consistent regardless of insurance type (Medicare, Medicaid and commercial payers) as well as for the uninsured.

David Blumenthal, MD, former National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, says these results support the expectation that federal support of EMRs will generate quality-related returns on investment (ROI).

Related articles: EHR Incentives Can Generate "Quality-Related" ROI, Study Says

Lack of usability is often at the root of slow electronic medical record (EMR) adoption—but usability refers to more than user satisfaction. It's not about the screens and the number of clicks used to navigate them; it's about the functionality of the system. Below are five ways to ensure your EMR won't cause headaches.

Ease. Your EMR cannot be burdensome. To ensure it isn't, you may want to look at how physicians interact with nurses (both in the office and on the phone) when using the demo EMR.

Supportiveness. Your EMR should support your office workflows. To ensure it does, you may want to present EMR vendors you're considering with three clinical scenarios: one that's common, one that's challenging, and one that involves many staff interactions.

Efficiency. A good EMR will ultimately save you time – and this can be accomplished in many ways, big and small. For example, keeping an electronic chart open on the desktop can help workflows, because if a provider is often in one patient’s chart when a phone call interrupts his work, he may want to open another chart but keep the first one open. To ensure efficiency, you'll want to watch providers using an EMR in real-life scenarios.

Flexibility. A good EMR will adapt to your changing needs. Ensure that it can evolve as providers become comfortable with improvements in workflow and operational efficiencies as new technologies are developed.

Effectiveness. Finally, your EMR has to work. In other words, does it help you achieve current results, which are based on volume of patients and procedures? Will it help you achieve future results, which many health care analysts believe will be value-driven, and for which clinical data is used to measure quality?

Related articles: Five Keys to EMR Usability

Many health care practitioners are still reluctant to implement electronic medical records (EMRs) despite increasing evidence of their benefits to practices and patients as well as significant financial incentives from the federal government—but the following five myths should not be among your reasons for reluctance.

EMRs are primarily for hospitals. EMRs are used more in large medical facilities, but they're quickly gaining traction among small health care practices as well.

It's hard to learn to operate an EMR. While there is a learning curve during EMR adoption as with any new technology, EMRs are increasingly easy to use, and many adopters are back to normal operations within as little as three weeks. Moreover, once implemented, EMRs can actually make work easier and significantly improve workflows with tools such as dictation software and an integrated dashboard to keep important information at your fingertips.

EMRs destroy the interaction between doctors and patients. According to a 2010 Government Accountability Office report, EMRs actually help doctors gain more information about a patient and thus improve communication.

EMRs present a security risk. Federal regulations give EMRs significant protection: Health care practitioners need login credentials to access charts, and the EMR's system tracks access. Plus, data is backed up so it's protected from disasters such as floods and fires, which would destroy paper charts,

EMRs are expensive. New EMR technology is emerging that is both effective and affordable, making it easier for small practices to join the EMR revolution.

Now there's one more reason to implement an electronic medical record (EMR): Patients are demanding it. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe health care practitioners who use an EMR to store records offer better care than those who use paper, according to a new survey.

The survey of 1,004 adults, conducted by GfK Roper, found that 78 percent of patients whose doctors use an EMR believe the EMR helps deliver better care—and 38 percent of patients whose doctors don't use an EMR would like them to do so.

On patients' wish lists when it comes to EMRs are emailed appointment reminders and online medical records. In fact, patients worry more about access to their medical records than they do about security, according to another survey by GfK Roper, this one of 1,000 adults. And another survey by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center found that patients are willing to give up some privacy for full access to online medical records.

The surveys highlight the importance of "participatory medicine," which promotes transparency between health care practitioners and patients, and which is being driven by increased technology, which eliminates the administrative burden of copying and faxing medical records.

Unfortunately, only 49 percent of patients reported that their health care practitioner used an EMR during their last office visit, a number that is unchanged from a similar survey conducted February 2010.