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Singing From the Same Hymnal: Experts Working Toward Getting EHRs to Talk to Each Other<
by: Suz Redfearn
Family physician Michael Poss is frustrated. Last spring, his four-doctor, Carrollton, Ga., practice spent $150,000 on an electronic health records (EHR) system, hoping to both streamline operations within the practice and allow seamless communication with the labs, hospitals, pharmacies, and other doctors the practice has a relationship with. The hope: that they’d be able to send patient information, lab reports, and prescription information back and forth in real time, speeding up efficiency, improving patient care, and increasing their return on investment. There was one big glitch, though. None of those labs, hospitals, pharmacies, and other doctors were using EHR systems that were set up to interact with each other, which made such trading of information, well, impossible. Poss’s practice had the tools — and so did a few of the providers he works with — but the systems did not speak a common language. “For the hospitals, it’s not a priority,” says Poss. “And the pharmacies are just starting to get savvy. Meantime, we’re ready to go. And we’re tired of shuffling faxes.” Turns out Poss and his partners, when they installed their EHR, were hoping more for a best-case scenario than reality. Still, if several government panels and private-sector groups have their way, it won’t be too long until that best-case scenario — a free flow of medical information among all providers, and even payers and consumers — is upon us. When President Bush brought computerized medical records front and center for the public by mentioning them in two subsequent State of the Union addresses, he started a flurry of activity on the EHR standardization and interoperability front. Then, in 2004, he called for 50 percent of the healthcare industry to go digital within 10 years, appointing a physician as head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHET), under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). ONCHET's initial big push? Creating EHR interoperability standards, starting with IT products marketed to the physician’s practice. In November, ONCHET awarded $18.6 million to four IT heavyweights — Accenture, Computer Science Corporation (CSC), IBM, and Northrop Grumman — to develop prototypes for an interoperable, standards-based network for exchanging healthcare information. Once created — it’s supposed to take a year — the designs will be placed in the public domain so others can use them to stimulate ideas. Meanwhile, three healthcare IT industry associations have joined forces to launch The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT). They also aim to get health IT products singing from the same hymnal. But this industry group has a second important mission: to develop a seal of approval for EHR systems that adhere to a set of standards (functionality, security, reliability and interoperability), thus reducing financial risk to providers who are fearful of investing in various EHRs. CCHIT’s first list of certified EHR systems is due out in March. “We’ll be looking at everything a physician would want in terms of being able to extract or send info to other clinicians — meds, labs, immunizations, clinical documentation, administrative and financial data,” explains Robert Tennant, senior policy advisor in health informatics for the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) and a member of the CCHIT board. There’s action at the state level, too. For instance, a group in Indiana, under a federal contract, is working to develop a prototype for a national IT infrastructure for the exchange of health information. It’s based on a mature EHR already used by 3,000 doctors and 18 hospitals in Indianapolis. What’s< |
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