Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Med students unfamiliar with electronic health records
Generation Y medical students are supposed to be the tech-savvy ones. As it turns out, they may be more familiar with Facebook than with the electronic health records they'll likely use in their medical practice. (Modern Physician, free-registration required)
Educators at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine assessed nearly 190 fourth-year medical students on their use of EHRs during a mock encounter simulating a cancer patient hospitalized with complications from chemotherapy.
Students were scored on their ability to find information crucial to the patient's case within the EHR and their ability to analyze the EHR without alienating the patient. While most couldn't access the information, they did interact with the patients face-to-face and even explained when they looked away to the computer.
Following more research, the school may incorporate class work on using EHRs.
Labels: electronic health records, health information technology, medical education, patient communication
posted by Ryan DuBosar at
9:00 AM
0 Comments
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Overheard at MGMA
I spend most of my time at conferences attending sessions and (obviously) updating the blog with what I've learned. For reasons I've never understood, most of the other reporters spend their time interviewing vendors of electronic health records (EHRs).
Writing on the computers in the press room gives me the opportunity to unobtrusively eavesdrop on their interviews. They're not usually very exciting, but today I heard something noteworthy--three different EHR vendors told three different reporters the same thing. To paraphrase, "Traffic is down on the exhibit floor, but the people who come by are way more serious about buying." Either they had a secret EHR vendor talking points meeting, or the attendees at this meeting really are shopping for more than free food and pens.
This is sort of contrary to what we heard at the MGMA press conference, which was that members seemed to be holding off on EHR investments until the government better defines "meaningful use" at the end of the year. That was just the impression of MGMA staff, though, so maybe they've missed this new trend.
Labels: electronic health records, MGMA conference
posted by Stacey Butterfield at
4:58 PM
0 Comments
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
QD: News Every Day
ACP Internist begins a daily digest of primary care in the news, debuting with an update on health care reform's messy reconciliation in Congress, good news about Medicare access (as health care currently stands) and what a national EHR network would look like.
Most recently for health care reform:
Two Democratic proposals to create a government insurance plan to compete with private insurers failed, while members of Congress turn their attention toward paying for abortion and insurance coverage for illegal immigrants. Now, Sen. Max Baucus is looking to revise a key financing provision after an analysis showed its tax burden would fall on seniors. In the wake of voting, amendments, provisions and alternatives are being slung left and right (politically, as well as figuratively.)
Since it's not a news cycle without something on H1N1, hundreds of New York state's health care workers protested a mandate that medical professionals get seasonal and swine-flu vaccines. But state health commissioner Richard F. Daines, FACP, told Gannett News Service, "This isn't the time to pump air into a completely deflated argument about vaccine safety."
Other issues internists should also be aware of include:
The Government Accountability Office found that less than 3% of Medicare beneficiaries had major problems accessing physician services, even while more people used the benefit and the number of services per beneficiary increased. More physicians are accepting Medicare, too. Unfortunately for Medicaid, it's far too easy to fraudulently access addictive drugs--65,000 instances costing of about $65 million in 2006 and 2007.
Finally, doctors' offices and hospitals are slowly, slowly moving toward electronic health records. Another view on the issue is instead of one national database, there'd be a "network of networks."
Labels: electronic health records, electronic medical records, emr, H1N1, health care reform, medicare, QD
posted by Ryan DuBosar at
1:06 PM
1 Comments
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Hacker demands ransom for patient records
The Web site Wikileaks reported this week that a computer hacker wiped out more than 8 million patient records stored on a secure site for the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program (VPMP) and replaced the home page with a ransom note demanding $10 million for the records' return. The director of Virginia's Department of Health Professions declined to provide details but confirmed that a criminal investigation is underway, according to the Washington Post's Security Fix blog, which picked up on the story.
While details have yet to be confirmed, there is a message on the VPMP Web site that its systems are inaccessable until further notice. The site, which also contained 35.5 million prescriptions, is used by health officials to monitor prescription drug abuse. The incident follows another as-yet unsolved case from October 2008 when hackers demanded ransom for the return of computer files held by Express Scripts Inc.
Knowing that anonymous hackers can bypass the safeguards of a supposedly secure government Web site is fodder for those who argue against transferring patient information to electronic records. But neither does it make sense for patient records to be relegated to paper, the lone holdout in an online world. It's a virtual arms race as legitimate Web sites step up security only to be foiled by ingenious hackers. One can only hope that the techies working inside the system are as clever as those on the dark side.
Labels: electronic health records
posted by Janet Colwell at
9:40 AM
2 Comments
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Obama should check his facts on EHRs, say Harvard docs
At last week's White House health-care summit, President Obama made electronic health records a cornerstone of his proposal for reform, a move he said could save up to $80 billion a year, among other benefits.
Unfortunately, that's wishful thinking, say Jerome Groopman, FACP, and Pamela Hartzband, FACP, in a commentary in today's Wall Street Journal. (Drs. Groopman and Hartzband, both on the Harvard Medical School faculty, write ACP Internist's Mindful Medicine column). The 2005 RAND study upon which the president based his cost savings predictions was funded by companies that stand to benefit from selling EHRs, they point out, and new information has surface over the past four years that contradicts the study's findings.
"The RAND study and the Obama proposal it spawned appear to be an elegant exercise in wishful thinking," Drs. Groopman and Hartzband write. The two note that they voted for Obama in part because of his "openness to changing his mind when those data contradict his initial approach to a problem." They call for him to apply that kind of scientific thinking to the health care conundrum.
Labels: electronic health records, health care reform
posted by Janet Colwell at
1:10 PM
1 Comments
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Wal-Mart to give EHRs the discount treatment
Most small physician offices cite cost as a big reason for not adopting electronic health records but what if they could buy their EHRs at Wal-Mart? Wonder no more. The mega-chain, known for using its huge purchasing power to offer deep discounts, announced that it will begin offering EHR packages through its Sam's Club division this spring, the New York Times reported--for about half the price currently charged by its competitors.
Wal-Mart's package will include hardware (through Dell), software (from eClinicalWorks), installation, maintenance and training. It has already test driven the technology over the past three years in its own clinics. According to the Times article, the package will cost under $25,000 for the first physician in a practice, about $10,000 for each additional physician and $4,000-$6,000 a year for annual maintenance and support. The chain is betting that its rock-bottom prices, combined with financial incentives offered through President Obama's stimulus package, will be the tipping point for doctors who've so far seen EHRs as out of reach.
It could be good news for small practices, even though Wal-Mart's ability to offer all things to all people can get a little scary. Now you can pop an EHR into your oversize cart, along with food, clothing, electronics, cosmetics, prescriptions, photos, eyeglasses -- and the list goes on. However, conditions were ripe for the retail giant to jump in. As an official quoted in the article notes, "We're a high-volume, low-cost company... And I would argue that mentality is sorely lacking in the health care industry."
Labels: electronic health records
posted by Janet Colwell at
8:47 AM
0 Comments
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