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| Compass Consulting Company |
| Newsletter - Recent Articles for the Healthcare Industry |
Copyright © 2008 Compass Consulting Company
June 04, 2008
Federal Health IT Office Unveils Five-Year Strategic Plan
HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT on Tuesday released a five-year
strategic plan to serve as a guide to coordinate the federal government's health IT
efforts, Digital Healthcare & Productivity reports.
"The plan provides an extensive documentation of the work completed by ONC and
other federal partners over the past five years," National Coordinator for Health IT
Robert Kolodner said in a press release, adding, "It also establishes the next
generation of health IT milestones to harness the power of information technology to
help transform health and care in the country."
Plan Details
The "ONC-Coordinated Federal Health IT Strategic Plan: 2008-2012" includes two
main goals: patient-focused health care and population health, Healthcare IT News
reports.
The patient-focused health care goal "envisions a transformation to higher-quality,
more cost-efficient care [and] meeting patients' needs through electronic health
record information access and use," according to ONC. Meanwhile, the office's
population health goal is to provide appropriate and timely access and use of
electronic health information to boost public health, biomedical research, quality
improvement and emergency preparedness (Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 6/3).
In addition, the plan provides timelines for achieving more than 40 milestones in the
areas of:
To reach these goals, the plan calls for:
ONC's health IT plan was created in collaboration with 12 agencies and staff divisions
within HHS; the Departments of Commerce, Defense and Veterans Affairs; and the
Federal Communications Commission. The National Committee on Vital and Health
Statistics and the American Health Information Community also contributed to the plan
(Digital Healthcare & Productivity, 6/3).
Arizona Launches Hospital Cost Comparison Web Site (5/7/08)
On Tuesday, the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association launched a new Web
site that allows patients to compare the average and median charges for medical
services at 80 hospitals statewide, the Tucson Citizen reports.
John Rivers, CEO of the health care association, said the Web site, called the Arizona
Hospital Choice, will allow consumers for the first time to compare charges for any
type of inpatient procedure in Arizona.
The Web site includes:
Average length of stay;
Average charge per day;
Percentage of male and female patients;
Number of patients; and
Median patient age (Rowley, Tucson Citizen, 5/7).
The site also provides links to hospital Web sites, which administrators hope will help
patients understand hospital payment policies.
The site does not include data on the cost of services by surgeons, anesthesiologists
or other medical providers, or the rates insurance companies negotiate with hospitals.
The Arizona Web site is modeled after a similar site created by a Wisconsin hospital
trade group. The Arizona site will be updated twice a year, beginning this fall.
Arizona has collected hospital data for more than 20 years under a 1985 state law.
The hospital association hopes to eventually provide quality data on the site, but the
information is not currently available for all Arizona hospitals (Reinhart, East Valley
Tribune, 5/7). Website: www.azhospitalchoice.org/
E-Prescribing
Meanwhile, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) issued an executive order to increase
electronic prescribing to boost patient safety, Government Technology reports. Fewer
than 3% of Arizona's current health providers use e-prescribing.
The order calls on the state's executive branch agencies to develop awareness and
use of medication safety tools (Government Technology, 5/6).
February 25, 2008
Web Services Help Baby Boomers Track Their Parents' Health
Baby boomers increasingly are turning to online services to help them care for their
elderly parents, the Boston Globe reports.
"Web-based services are becoming an integral part of the decision-making process,
helping families navigate the increasingly complicated health care system," Shane
Herlet, director of operations at Benchmark Assisted Living in Wellesley, Mass., said.
Andy Mandell, executive director of the Defeat Diabetes Foundation, said he likes the
24-hour accessibility and comprehensiveness of online services because they offer
"an opportunity to share information with each other, and have a place to store
valuable documents like insurance papers, and to communicate quickly and
efficiently."
Such services also can help disseminate information to family members.
The Globe highlighted several online caregiver services, including:
Caregiverhelper.com, a secure online service that stores information about
medications, emergency contacts and physician appointments;
House-works.com, which is designed to help seniors live independently;
Lotsahelpinghands.com, which provides an online calendar for organizing meals,
appointments and transportation; and
Parentcarecall.com, a service that calls those living alone to remind them when to
take their medication.
Andrea Cohen, cofounder of house-works.com, said, "Many of our customers are
adult baby boomers who are very busy and want to be able to access the information
whenever they need it" (Lebovits, Boston Globe, 2/25).
HHS Proposes Rule To Begin Adopting Patient Safety and Quality Act
HHS has published a proposed rule to adopt a provision of the Patient Safety and
Quality Improvement Act of 2005 that involves the creation of patient safety
organizations and a network of databases to collect and analyze reports of medical
errors, Modern Healthcare reports.
Under the rule, published in the Feb. 12 issue of Federal Register, public and private
not-for-profit organizations are eligible for certification as patient safety organizations
through the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
The organizations will not be entitled to federal funding, according to HHS
(DerGurahian, Modern Healthcare, 2/12).
The proposed rule comes less than a month after Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.)
asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate why HHS had not yet
implemented the law (Health Data Management, 2/12).
The law requires HHS to:
The proposed rule establishes the authorities, processes and rules necessary to
implement the act. It also outlines confidentiality protections for submitted data to
facilitate participation by hospitals and other providers.
HHS will publish a separate proposed rule to begin developing the network of patient
safety databases (Health Data Management, 2/12).
Federal Health Chief Calls for Health Care 'Travelocity'
Last week, HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt called for a "Travelocity for health care," a
system that would give physicians a quality grade and detail how much they charge
for services, the Memphis Business Journal reports.
Leavitt said that consumers could use the system to compare physicians' abilities and
prices online as they do when making other purchases. Such a Web site is still years
away, but it could mean big technology investments for small physician offices and
underscore the need to establish national standards for medical care.
The idea is that Medicare could use electronic health record data to grade physicians
rather than insurance information to produce more accurate grades, the Business
Journal reports.
"The current situation where doctors are being rated by insurance companies with
claims data ... is not a fair way to go," Valerie Arnold, past president of the Memphis
Medical Society, said, adding that an EHR "is clearly a more fair way to get at that
data than to use claims-based information."
However, Arnold noted that EHRs might be too expensive for small group practices or
an individual doctor. She added that a doctor's charges do not always reflect the
quality of medical services.
Leavitt also touted a plan to create a national "learning network" of physician offices.
About 1,200 physician offices would receive higher Medicare reimbursements in
exchange for sharing information with HHS to boost the national quality reporting and
grading system, he said (Sells, Memphis Business Journal, 2/11).
Wal-Mart To Open 400 Retail Health Clinics With EHRs
Wal-Mart is partnering with St. Vincent Health System in Little Rock, Ark., and
RediClinic, a retail health screening service, to open about 400 retail clinics by 2010
that will all use a common electronic health record platform, Healthcare IT News
reports.
All of the new clinics will create a standard EHR for patients that will be accessible at
any Wal-Mart clinic (Merrill, Healthcare IT News, 2/8).
Tine Hansen-Turton, executive director of the Convenient Care Association trade
group, said that using EHRs is one of the 10 standards her organization developed
for retail clinics. However, she noted that sharing patients' EHRs with physician offices
that have not adopted EHR systems is a challenge for clinics. She said clinics use
faxes to share the information (Robeznieks, Modern Healthcare, 2/8).
Wal-Mart officials said the clinics will maintain pricing transparency to let customers
know up front the costs for visits, which typically range between $40 and $65.
In addition, Lee Scott, Wal-Mart president and CEO, said last month that Wal-Mart
"will provide [EHRs] to U.S. associates and their family members -- including retirees
-- by the end of 2010" (Healthcare IT News, 2/8).
Protocol Driven Reimbursement: Model for the Future?
In an effort to improve provider adherence to best practice guidelines and reduce
health care costs, a group of industry representatives - including officials from the
American Hospital Association, Leapfrog Group, Harvard School of Public Health, and
Blue Cross Blue Shield Association - has developed a new payment model which
would reimburse providers based on evidence-based case rates (ECRs).
The system - proposed by the not-for-profit PROMETHEUS Payment coalition after 20
months of development - would differ from existing reimbursement structures in that it
would calculate the total cost of providing clinically appropriate services through an
entire episode of care; unlike capitation and fee-for-service, PROMETHEUS says, the
new model would encourage neither the restriction nor overutilization of services.
Under the model, which initially would target oncology care, chronic condition
management, interventional cardiology, orthopedics, and preventive services, payers
would reimburse physicians and hospitals upfront through severity-adjusted ECRs,
awarding high performers more than 100% of the ECR and reducing payments to
underperformers.
Aiming to foster additional provider improvements, payers would also put 10% to 20%
of payments at risk, contingent upon performance on cost, efficiency, outcomes,
patient satisfaction, and care continuity measures; performance in those areas would
also be disclosed to consumers in scorecards. PROMETHEUS representatives note
that they plan to refine the model by collaborating with employers in pilot projects
nationwide and say a search is currently underway for potential sites (PROMETHEUS
website, accessed 9/15/06; PRNewswire, 9/13/06; Modern Healthcare, 9/14/06).
What Would Be the Biggest Benefit of Clinicians Using IT?
Three-fourths of health IT professionals said that improved quality of care would be
the biggest benefit of clinicians using IT, according to a survey by the Healthcare
Information and Management Systems Society.
Sixteen percent of respondents said improved staff efficiency would be the biggest
benefit, while 4% cited increased revenue for the health care organization. Just 2% of
respondents said that the biggest benefit would be making the organization more
competitive in the local market.
Experts Tout Health IT as Key to Health Care Reform Efforts
On Thursday, health IT experts told the Senate Budget Committee that health IT
underlies larger health care reform efforts that could help control rising health care
costs, Government Health IT reports (Government Health IT, 2/14).
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) cited a RAND study that estimated that health IT
could help the medical community save between $81 billion and $346 billion annually
(Povich, CongressDaily, 2/14).
Laura Adams, president and CEO of the Rhode Island Quality Institute, told the
committee that certain reform initiatives including medical homes, pay-for-
performance programs, quality measurements and universal health coverage, all
would require health IT.
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) added that "if we are going to be honest with ourselves ...
some of these reforms will have up front costs. And we don't know yet how much they
will ultimately save" (Government Health IT, 2/14).
Status of Legislation, Next Steps
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) told the committee that two senators, who he did not
identify, have a "hold" on the Wired for Health Care Quality Act because of concerns
about patient privacy.
Whitehouse pointed to a separate bill that he is sponsoring as an option to streamline
health IT adoption by creating a public-private partnership modeled after earlier
projects (CongressDaily, 2/14).
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT also plans to issue an
overarching strategy to guide its work in helping providers adopt IT in the second
quarter of 2008, according to Valerie Melvin, director of human capital and
management information systems at the Government Accountability Office
(Government Health IT, 2/14).
Federal Health IT Office Unveils Five-Year Strategic Plan
HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT on Tuesday released a five-year
strategic plan to serve as a guide to coordinate the federal government's health IT
efforts, Digital Healthcare & Productivity reports.
"The plan provides an extensive documentation of the work completed by ONC and
other federal partners over the past five years," National Coordinator for Health IT
Robert Kolodner said in a press release, adding, "It also establishes the next
generation of health IT milestones to harness the power of information technology to
help transform health and care in the country."
Plan Details
The "ONC-Coordinated Federal Health IT Strategic Plan: 2008-2012" includes two
main goals: patient-focused health care and population health, Healthcare IT News
reports.
The patient-focused health care goal "envisions a transformation to higher-quality,
more cost-efficient care [and] meeting patients' needs through electronic health
record information access and use," according to ONC. Meanwhile, the office's
population health goal is to provide appropriate and timely access and use of
electronic health information to boost public health, biomedical research, quality
improvement and emergency preparedness (Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 6/3).
In addition, the plan provides timelines for achieving more than 40 milestones in the
areas of:
- Adoption;
- Collaborative governance;
- Interoperability; and
- Privacy and security (Health Data Management, 6/3).
To reach these goals, the plan calls for:
- Engaging multiple stakeholders across the public and private sectors;
- Addressing reliability, confidentiality, privacy and security when exchanging,
storing and using electronic health data; and - Focusing on the health care consumer as a key participant (Healthcare IT
News, 6/3).
ONC's health IT plan was created in collaboration with 12 agencies and staff divisions
within HHS; the Departments of Commerce, Defense and Veterans Affairs; and the
Federal Communications Commission. The National Committee on Vital and Health
Statistics and the American Health Information Community also contributed to the plan
(Digital Healthcare & Productivity, 6/3).
Arizona Launches Hospital Cost Comparison Web Site (5/7/08)
On Tuesday, the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association launched a new Web
site that allows patients to compare the average and median charges for medical
services at 80 hospitals statewide, the Tucson Citizen reports.
John Rivers, CEO of the health care association, said the Web site, called the Arizona
Hospital Choice, will allow consumers for the first time to compare charges for any
type of inpatient procedure in Arizona.
The Web site includes:
Average length of stay;
Average charge per day;
Percentage of male and female patients;
Number of patients; and
Median patient age (Rowley, Tucson Citizen, 5/7).
The site also provides links to hospital Web sites, which administrators hope will help
patients understand hospital payment policies.
The site does not include data on the cost of services by surgeons, anesthesiologists
or other medical providers, or the rates insurance companies negotiate with hospitals.
The Arizona Web site is modeled after a similar site created by a Wisconsin hospital
trade group. The Arizona site will be updated twice a year, beginning this fall.
Arizona has collected hospital data for more than 20 years under a 1985 state law.
The hospital association hopes to eventually provide quality data on the site, but the
information is not currently available for all Arizona hospitals (Reinhart, East Valley
Tribune, 5/7). Website: www.azhospitalchoice.org/
E-Prescribing
Meanwhile, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) issued an executive order to increase
electronic prescribing to boost patient safety, Government Technology reports. Fewer
than 3% of Arizona's current health providers use e-prescribing.
The order calls on the state's executive branch agencies to develop awareness and
use of medication safety tools (Government Technology, 5/6).
February 25, 2008
Web Services Help Baby Boomers Track Their Parents' Health
Baby boomers increasingly are turning to online services to help them care for their
elderly parents, the Boston Globe reports.
"Web-based services are becoming an integral part of the decision-making process,
helping families navigate the increasingly complicated health care system," Shane
Herlet, director of operations at Benchmark Assisted Living in Wellesley, Mass., said.
Andy Mandell, executive director of the Defeat Diabetes Foundation, said he likes the
24-hour accessibility and comprehensiveness of online services because they offer
"an opportunity to share information with each other, and have a place to store
valuable documents like insurance papers, and to communicate quickly and
efficiently."
Such services also can help disseminate information to family members.
The Globe highlighted several online caregiver services, including:
Caregiverhelper.com, a secure online service that stores information about
medications, emergency contacts and physician appointments;
House-works.com, which is designed to help seniors live independently;
Lotsahelpinghands.com, which provides an online calendar for organizing meals,
appointments and transportation; and
Parentcarecall.com, a service that calls those living alone to remind them when to
take their medication.
Andrea Cohen, cofounder of house-works.com, said, "Many of our customers are
adult baby boomers who are very busy and want to be able to access the information
whenever they need it" (Lebovits, Boston Globe, 2/25).
HHS Proposes Rule To Begin Adopting Patient Safety and Quality Act
HHS has published a proposed rule to adopt a provision of the Patient Safety and
Quality Improvement Act of 2005 that involves the creation of patient safety
organizations and a network of databases to collect and analyze reports of medical
errors, Modern Healthcare reports.
Under the rule, published in the Feb. 12 issue of Federal Register, public and private
not-for-profit organizations are eligible for certification as patient safety organizations
through the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
The organizations will not be entitled to federal funding, according to HHS
(DerGurahian, Modern Healthcare, 2/12).
The proposed rule comes less than a month after Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.)
asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate why HHS had not yet
implemented the law (Health Data Management, 2/12).
The law requires HHS to:
- Facilitate the creation of a network of databases to collect, aggregate and
analyze submitted reports of medical errors or near-errors; - Adopt standard formats for reporting information to the databases; and
- Make public analysis of regional and national statistics and trends via annual
reports from patient safety organizations (iHealthBeat, 1/22).
The proposed rule establishes the authorities, processes and rules necessary to
implement the act. It also outlines confidentiality protections for submitted data to
facilitate participation by hospitals and other providers.
HHS will publish a separate proposed rule to begin developing the network of patient
safety databases (Health Data Management, 2/12).
Federal Health Chief Calls for Health Care 'Travelocity'
Last week, HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt called for a "Travelocity for health care," a
system that would give physicians a quality grade and detail how much they charge
for services, the Memphis Business Journal reports.
Leavitt said that consumers could use the system to compare physicians' abilities and
prices online as they do when making other purchases. Such a Web site is still years
away, but it could mean big technology investments for small physician offices and
underscore the need to establish national standards for medical care.
The idea is that Medicare could use electronic health record data to grade physicians
rather than insurance information to produce more accurate grades, the Business
Journal reports.
"The current situation where doctors are being rated by insurance companies with
claims data ... is not a fair way to go," Valerie Arnold, past president of the Memphis
Medical Society, said, adding that an EHR "is clearly a more fair way to get at that
data than to use claims-based information."
However, Arnold noted that EHRs might be too expensive for small group practices or
an individual doctor. She added that a doctor's charges do not always reflect the
quality of medical services.
Leavitt also touted a plan to create a national "learning network" of physician offices.
About 1,200 physician offices would receive higher Medicare reimbursements in
exchange for sharing information with HHS to boost the national quality reporting and
grading system, he said (Sells, Memphis Business Journal, 2/11).
Wal-Mart To Open 400 Retail Health Clinics With EHRs
Wal-Mart is partnering with St. Vincent Health System in Little Rock, Ark., and
RediClinic, a retail health screening service, to open about 400 retail clinics by 2010
that will all use a common electronic health record platform, Healthcare IT News
reports.
All of the new clinics will create a standard EHR for patients that will be accessible at
any Wal-Mart clinic (Merrill, Healthcare IT News, 2/8).
Tine Hansen-Turton, executive director of the Convenient Care Association trade
group, said that using EHRs is one of the 10 standards her organization developed
for retail clinics. However, she noted that sharing patients' EHRs with physician offices
that have not adopted EHR systems is a challenge for clinics. She said clinics use
faxes to share the information (Robeznieks, Modern Healthcare, 2/8).
Wal-Mart officials said the clinics will maintain pricing transparency to let customers
know up front the costs for visits, which typically range between $40 and $65.
In addition, Lee Scott, Wal-Mart president and CEO, said last month that Wal-Mart
"will provide [EHRs] to U.S. associates and their family members -- including retirees
-- by the end of 2010" (Healthcare IT News, 2/8).
Protocol Driven Reimbursement: Model for the Future?
In an effort to improve provider adherence to best practice guidelines and reduce
health care costs, a group of industry representatives - including officials from the
American Hospital Association, Leapfrog Group, Harvard School of Public Health, and
Blue Cross Blue Shield Association - has developed a new payment model which
would reimburse providers based on evidence-based case rates (ECRs).
The system - proposed by the not-for-profit PROMETHEUS Payment coalition after 20
months of development - would differ from existing reimbursement structures in that it
would calculate the total cost of providing clinically appropriate services through an
entire episode of care; unlike capitation and fee-for-service, PROMETHEUS says, the
new model would encourage neither the restriction nor overutilization of services.
Under the model, which initially would target oncology care, chronic condition
management, interventional cardiology, orthopedics, and preventive services, payers
would reimburse physicians and hospitals upfront through severity-adjusted ECRs,
awarding high performers more than 100% of the ECR and reducing payments to
underperformers.
Aiming to foster additional provider improvements, payers would also put 10% to 20%
of payments at risk, contingent upon performance on cost, efficiency, outcomes,
patient satisfaction, and care continuity measures; performance in those areas would
also be disclosed to consumers in scorecards. PROMETHEUS representatives note
that they plan to refine the model by collaborating with employers in pilot projects
nationwide and say a search is currently underway for potential sites (PROMETHEUS
website, accessed 9/15/06; PRNewswire, 9/13/06; Modern Healthcare, 9/14/06).
What Would Be the Biggest Benefit of Clinicians Using IT?
Three-fourths of health IT professionals said that improved quality of care would be
the biggest benefit of clinicians using IT, according to a survey by the Healthcare
Information and Management Systems Society.
Sixteen percent of respondents said improved staff efficiency would be the biggest
benefit, while 4% cited increased revenue for the health care organization. Just 2% of
respondents said that the biggest benefit would be making the organization more
competitive in the local market.
Experts Tout Health IT as Key to Health Care Reform Efforts
On Thursday, health IT experts told the Senate Budget Committee that health IT
underlies larger health care reform efforts that could help control rising health care
costs, Government Health IT reports (Government Health IT, 2/14).
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) cited a RAND study that estimated that health IT
could help the medical community save between $81 billion and $346 billion annually
(Povich, CongressDaily, 2/14).
Laura Adams, president and CEO of the Rhode Island Quality Institute, told the
committee that certain reform initiatives including medical homes, pay-for-
performance programs, quality measurements and universal health coverage, all
would require health IT.
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) added that "if we are going to be honest with ourselves ...
some of these reforms will have up front costs. And we don't know yet how much they
will ultimately save" (Government Health IT, 2/14).
Status of Legislation, Next Steps
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) told the committee that two senators, who he did not
identify, have a "hold" on the Wired for Health Care Quality Act because of concerns
about patient privacy.
Whitehouse pointed to a separate bill that he is sponsoring as an option to streamline
health IT adoption by creating a public-private partnership modeled after earlier
projects (CongressDaily, 2/14).
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT also plans to issue an
overarching strategy to guide its work in helping providers adopt IT in the second
quarter of 2008, according to Valerie Melvin, director of human capital and
management information systems at the Government Accountability Office
(Government Health IT, 2/14).
Health Care News
Healthcare is a very dynamic profession necessitating acting and reacting to the current
environment. This page provides some recent articles of interest in the industry that you
may find helpful in your business.
Healthcare is a very dynamic profession necessitating acting and reacting to the current
environment. This page provides some recent articles of interest in the industry that you
may find helpful in your business.
Salinas Office:
25560 Meadowview Circle
Salinas, CA 93908
Phone: (831) 214-0964
Fax: (831) 484-1058
ekjohnsen@sbcglobal.net
License #0D93215
25560 Meadowview Circle
Salinas, CA 93908
Phone: (831) 214-0964
Fax: (831) 484-1058
ekjohnsen@sbcglobal.net
License #0D93215