Patient's Rights and the Required Standardization (Health Insurance and Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of all Medical Forms- Part II of a II Part Series
(3/4/10)- The director of the Office of Device Evaluation at the Food and Drug Administration announced that she would be leaving the organization this month to join the Washington office of Microsoft Corp.
Dr. Donna-Bea Tillman said in an interview that she would be part of the company's plan to increase its efforts to develop medical information technology systems. Dr. Tillman had been with the agency since 1994, and she said in an email that she will become part of the company's health-solutions group as director of regulations and policy.
Electronic health record systemization is in the forefront of the $18 billion in federal stimulus money to be spent under the Obama program.
(2/19/10)- Under a pilot program that has been initiated by 5 of the largest private health insurance companies in New Jersey, doctors and hospitals will be able to go into a single site to see which insurance covers a patient and to track the progress of their claim.
The site is the one that NaviNet already offers for individual health plans. Insurers started a similar pilot program in Ohio, and Florida and California are also discussing such a system.
Aetna, AmeriHealth New Jersey, Cigna, Horizon Blue Cross and Shield of New Jersey and United Healthcare, which represent about 95% of the people covered by private insurers in the state are participating
The number of physicians and other prescribers using e-prescription increased from 74,000 in 2008 to 143,000 now. By the end of August, 110 million of more than 3.7 billion prescriptions filled yearly among retail pharmacies in the country were filed electronically, a report from Surescripts said. The figures indicate that "federal incentives are working," a Surescripts official said.
(11/28/09)- According to the results of a new study that was financed by the federal government and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that compared 3,000 hospitals at various stages in the adoption of computerized health records, there has been very little shown in the way of improved quality of care.
The researchers in the study were led by Dr. Ashish K. Ja, an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and Catherine M.DesRoches of Massachusetts General Hospital.
It is estimated that about 20% of physicians currently use electronic record keeping technology.
Under the Obama administration's computerization of record keeping plan, doctors and hospitals will receive incentive payments for "meaningful use" of "certified" records. The government expects to spend about $19 billion of federal money on this program.
The study placed hospitals into three groups: those with full featured electronic health records, those with only basic ones, and those without computerized records. It then looked at their performance on federally approved quality measures in caring for patients.
For hospitals with fullo-featured digital records, the average length of stay was 5.5 days; for those with only basic computer records, 5.7 days; and those without, 5.7 days
(10/5/09)- North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System plans to offer its 7,000 affiliated doctors subsidies of up to $40,000 each over five years to be used to adopt a digital patient record keeping system. This subsidy would be in addition to the federal support for computerizing patient records, which can total $44,000 per doctor over five years.
The federal program is part of the large stimulus package passed that include about $19 billion in incentive payments to computerize patient records, as a way to improve care and lower medical costs in the long run.
Memorial Hermann Healthcare System in Houston, Texas and Tufts Medical Center in Boston, Mass., have undertaken a similar program, but the North Shore-LIJ program is the largest one undertaken so far in this country.
The subsidy will be 50% of the total cost for physicians who simply install electronic health records that can communicate between the doctor's office, labs and hospitals.
The subsidy will rise to 85% of the total costs of digital records for physicians who agree to share data on patient measures. Personal identifiers of the patients will be stripped from the data.
The program will begin with about 100 physicians and then roll out more broadly.
(4/22/09)- President Barack Obama and his administration continues to lead the medical community towards greater adoption of a nation-wide electronic e-health record system. In furtherance of that objective, he announced that the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs would collaborate on building an electronic database of all administrative and medical information for all U.S. servicemen and women.
The new Joint Virtual Life Record (JVLR) is expected to track individuals once they enlist, through their military service and beyond. The JVLR system will help deliver health-care benefits to veterans and active duty military members.
The president made the announcement of the new system before an audience of veterans, including patients at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the National Navy Medical Center and the D.C. Veterans Medical Center.
The president's fiscal 2010 budget calls for the largest ever one-year increase for the Veterans Affairs Department, and a $25 billion increase over the next five years for the department..
The stimulus package that was passed by Congress allocates over $19 billion to be used to expand the electronic medical records keeping system in this country.
The following is an email that we received from the Department of Health and Human Services concerning obtaining continuing information about HIPAA:
Dear HIPAA-Regs listserv subscriber:
We want to make you aware the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is responsible for implementation of the HIPAA Privacy Rule, has announced the creation of a listserv to distribute announcements, notices of available resources, and other educational information about the HIPAA Privacy Rule.
You are receiving this initial mailing because of your interest as a subscriber to other HHS lists relating to similar topics. We encourage you to take advantage of this new opportunity and register for this tool to receive up-to-date information from OCR.
OCR also invites you to visit its website, www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/, where a wide range of helpful guidance and technical assistance materials about the Privacy Rule as well as civil rights are available. OCR continues to add materials to this site, such as a recent letter to healthcare providers highlighting how educational materials and technical assistance information available at the website respond to myths about the Privacy Rule.
We trust this information will be helpful to you.
This email is from the US Department of Health and Human Services HIPAA-Regs Listserv. For information on subscribing or un-subscribing,
please go to http://aspe.hhs.gov/admnsimp/lsnotify.htm
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FOR AN INFORMATIVE AND PERSONAL ARTICLE ON PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS WHEN SELECTING A NURSING HOME SEE OUR ARTICLE
"How to Select a Nursing Home"By Allan Rubin
updated March 4, 2010
http://www.therubins.com
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