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EHR Certification Revoked for EHRMagic

Yesterday HHS released news that they’d revoked the EHR certification of the EHRMagic-Ambulatory and EHRMagic-Inpatient EHR software. Looks like InoGard originally certified the EHR and they and ONC received information that had them retest the EHR software and it failed the certification re-test.

I think we all want government to hold bad actors accountable. So, it’s good to weed out EHR companies that aren’t doing what they should. However, they better also be careful. Imagine being a doctor of an EHR vendor whose EHR certification gets revoked. Does that mean that they have to give back the EHR incentive money the received? Those doctors trusted in InfoGard’s ability to certify an EHR vendor and InfoGard failed at that job. Should a doctor be punished for InfoGard’s failing? Now apply this to a hospital that uses a certified EHR and loses that EHR certification. That’s a multi-million dollar impact.

I guess EHRMagic better take down the info on their website that says they can get physicians $44,000 in EHR incentive money. Looking at their website, it makes me wonder who chose to use their EHR in the first place. That would be interesting to know.

Here’s the full press release from HHS on the EHR revocation:

Two electronic health records, previously certified as products to be used as part of the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs, have had their certifications revoked. Farzad Mostashari, M.D., the national coordinator for health information technology, announced today that the products do not meet standards and providers cannot use these products to meet the requirements of the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive programs.

EHRMagic-Ambulatory and EHRMagic-Inpatient, both developed by EHRMagic Inc. of Santa Fe Springs, Calif., no longer meet the EHR certification requirements. The EHRs must be certified by a certification body (ACB) authorized by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) before regaining certification.

Both ONC and an ONC ACB, InfoGard Laboratories Inc. (InfoGard), received notifications that the EHRMagic products did not meet the required functionality and the products should not have passed certification. InfoGard analyzed the additional information from the notification and contacted EHRMagic, launching the ONC authorized certification body required surveillance activities. InfoGard concluded that it was necessary for the EHR products to be retested for select requirements. EHRMagic, Inc. participated in retesting and failed.

“We and our certification bodies take complaints and our follow-up seriously. By revoking the certification of these EHR products, we are making sure that certified electronic health record products meet the requirements to protect patients and providers,” said Dr. Mostashari. “Because EHRMagic was unable to show that their EHR products met ONC’s certification requirements, their EHRs will no longer be certified under the ONC HIT Certification Program.”

Information about ONC’s certification process for EHR technologies is available at http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/certification-process-ehr-technologies.

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April 26, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Companies  EHR Incentive  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  EMR Companies  Healthcare IT  HITECH  Meaningful Use
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HHS announces 2013 Healthcare IT Agenda

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Acting Administrator Marilyn Tavenner and the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Farzad Mostashari, M.D., today announced HHS’s plan to accelerate health information exchange (HIE) and build a seamless and secure flow of information essential to transforming the health care system.

“Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, we are improving the way care is delivered while lowering costs,” said Acting Administrator Tavenner. “We are already seeing benefits, such as a reduction in hospital readmissions due to these reforms. Health IT and the secure exchange of information across providers are crucial to reforming the system, and must be a routine part of care delivery.”

This year, HHS will:

  • Set aggressive goals for 2013: HHS is setting the goal of 50 percent of physician offices using electronic health records (EHR) and 80 percent of eligible hospitals receiving meaningful use incentive payments by the end of 2013.
  • Increase the emphasis on interoperability: HHS will increase its emphasis on ensuring electronic exchange across providers. It will start that effort by issuing a request for information (RFI) seeking public input about a variety of policies that will strengthen the business case for electronic exchange across providers to ensure patients’ health information will follow them seamlessly and securely wherever they access care.
  • Enhance the effective use of electronic health records through initiatives like the Blue Button initiative. Medicare beneficiaries can access their full Medicare records online today. HHS is working with the Veterans Administration and more than 450 different organizations to make health care information available to patients and health plan members. HHS is also encouraging Medicare Advantage plans to expand the use of Blue Button to provide beneficiaries with one-click secure access to their health information.
  • Implement Meaningful Use Stage 2: HHS is implementing rules that define what data must be able to be exchanged between Health IT systems, including how data will be structured and coded so that providers will have one uniform way to format and securely send data.
  • Underscore program integrity: HHS is taking new steps to ensure the integrity of the program is sound and technology is not being used to game the system. For example, it is conducting extensive medical reviews and issuing Comparative Billing reports that identify providers.

The goals build on the significant progress HHS and its partners have already made on expanding health information technology use. EHR adoption has tripled since 2010, increasing to 44 percent in 2012 and computerized physician order entry has more than doubled (increased 168 percent) since 2008.

“The 2014 standards for electronic health records create the technical capacity for providers to be able to share information with each and with the patient,” said Dr. Mostashari. “Through the RFI, we are interested in hearing about policies that could provide an even greater business case for such information sharing.”

In addition to seeking public input, the RFI also discusses several potential new policies and ideas to accelerate interoperability and exchange of a patient’s health information across care settings so that they can deliver better and more affordable care to their patients.

The RFI can be found at http://www.ofr.gov/OFRUpload/OFRData/2013-05266_PI.pdf. Deadline for comments is April 21, 2013.

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March 8, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: Healthcare  Healthcare IT
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MU Stage 3 Comment Period and Hospital EHR Attestation Deadline Approaching

HIT Policy Committee sent out an email with a request for comments on meaningful use stage 3. Here’s the email that was sent out:

Speak up now to help ONC’s Health Information Technology Policy Committee (HITPC) develop Stage 3 meaningful use recommendations that will target a collaborative model of care with shared responsibility and accountability, building upon previous meaningful use objectives through the Request for Comment.

The comment period is now open. Each item that the HITPC is requesting comment on has been given an identification number in order to streamline the accumulation of comments. Please use this ID number when submitting comments. Submit a comment online.

The deadline for comments is 11:59p.m. ET on January 14, 2013.

Following the analysis of the comments received throughout the comment period, the HITPC intends to revisit these recommendations in its public meetings in the first quarter of 2013.

Also, for those Eligible Hospitals and Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs), the last day for you to register and submit attestation in fiscal year 2012 for the Medicare EHR program is November 30, 2012. For eligible hospitals and CAHs, this means that they must successfully attest to meeting meaningful use to be eligible to receive an incentive payment for FY 2012.

CMS has also put together this PDF of the meaningful use and EHR incentive timeline. Be careful so you don’t miss any deadlines.

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November 27, 2012 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Incentive  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare IT  HITECH  Meaningful Use
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Meaningful Use Stage 2 Final Rule Published

UPDATE: For those not wanting to go through all 672 pages of the meaningful use stage 2 final rule, ONC has put out this summary PDF.

Today, CMS publishes the meaningful use Stage 2 Final rule in the Federal Register. The MU stage 2 final rule is 672 pages long.

The HHS press release announcing the EHR incentive money stage 2 final rule also offered these important points to note:

  • Make clear that stage two of the program will begin as early as 2014. No providers will be required to follow the Stage 2 requirements outlined today before 2014.
  • Outline the certification criteria for the certification of EHR technology, so eligible professionals and hospitals may be assured that the systems they use will work, help them meaningfully use health information technology, and qualify for incentive payments.
  • Modify the certification program to cut red tape and make the certification process more efficient.
  • Allow current “2011 Edition Certified EHR Technology” to be used until 2014.

The second point annoys me a little after hearing about some of the EHR certification fraud and issues it could cause providers that attest to meaningful use.

The press release also offered the following EHR incentive participation numbers:
-120,000 Eligible Health Professionals have participated
-3,300 Hospitals have participated
-More than half of all eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals and 1 out of every 5 eligible health care professionals

Watch for more detailed coverage of the meaningful use stage 2 final rule in our ongoing Meaningful Use Monday series.

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August 23, 2012 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Incentive  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare IT  HITECH  Meaningful Use
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Meaningful Use Stage 2 Comment Period Ends May 7th

ONC and CMS sent out the following email about the meaningful use stage 2 comment period. It closes very soon and so I encourage everyone to submit their comments on meaningful use stage 2. I’m a real proponent of the benefits of crowd sourcing and if enough people comment on meaningful use stage 2, I think we’ll receive the benefits of the crowd participating in the discussion and improving MU stage 2. I encourage doctors in particular to share their comments on the meaningful use stage 2 NPRM.

Please note that the comment period closes on Monday, May 7 for the notices of proposed rule-making (NPRMs) for Stage 2 of meaningful use and updated certification criteria.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) rule proposes the capabilities and related standards and implementation specifications that Certified EHR Technology will need to include to, at a minimum, support the achievement of “meaningful use” by eligible health care professionals beginning with the EHR reporting periods in FY/CY 2014. The rule also proposes revisions to the permanent certification program for health information technology, which include changing the name of the program to the “ONC HIT Certification Program.”

ONC’s rule complements the newly released Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed rule for Stage 2 of the EHR Incentive Programs, clarifying the specifications necessary to meet the criteria for these programs.

Comments Can Be Submitted in 4 Ways

Both ONC and CMS rules identify that comments can be officially submitted in 4 ways:

  1. Electronically through www.regulations.gov – this is the preferred method
  2. Regular mail
  3. Express mail or overnight mail
  4. Hand-delivered/courier

Faxes are not accepted.

To enhance the public comment experience, ONC and CMS have made a copy of the rule available in Microsoft Word to make it easier those who comment to access and copy portions of their proposed rule for use in their individual comments.  Visit http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/meaningful-use-stage-2 for more information.

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May 4, 2012 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Incentive  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare IT  HITECH  Meaningful Use
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Farzad Mostashari’s Post on Meaningful Use Stage 2 NPRM

I love that Farzad Mostashari and other people at HHS and ONC have been blogging about these exciting times in healthcare IT. Farzad recently did a post about the meaningful use stage 2 NPRM (see this Meaningful Use Monday post on Meaningful Use Stage 2). He starts off the post with some interesting numbers:

to date, more than 43,000 providers have received $3.1 billion to help make the transition to EHRs; the number of hospitals using EHRs has more than doubled in the last two years from 16 to 35 percent between 2009 and 2011; and 85 percent of hospitals now report that by 2015 they intend to take advantage of the incentive payments.

I’ve always found the ONC/CMS/HHS numbers to be a bit higher than reality. Although, I bet their hospital numbers aren’t too far off. There’s little doubt that hospitals are interested in EHR.

Farzad also offered the most succinct view of the 3 stages of meaningful use that I’ve seen. Here’s basically his vision for meaningful use:

  • Stage 1 (which began in 2011 and remains the starting point for all providers): “meaningful use” consists of transferring data to EHRs and being able to share information, including electronic copies and visit summaries for patients.
  • Stage 2 (to be implemented in 2014 under the proposed rule): “meaningful use” includes standards such as online access for patients to their health information and electronic health information exchange between providers.
  • Stage 3 (expected to be implemented in 2016): “meaningful use” includes demonstrating that the quality of health care has been improved.

I posted a comment on the blog post which is still waiting to be approved:

Some very interesting numbers and I appreciate the overall vision of what each stage will do. The first part of this post reminds me of what I heard at HIMSS, that ONC has become more of a marketing organization. I found that interesting since you could easily see why ONC is considered an EHR marketing organization.

These first year numbers are interest, but the second year numbers will matter even more. The first year numbers were likely those who already adopted EHR versus those that implemented EHR post-stimulus. Let’s hope the message that providers offer after they’ve implemented is that they love their EHR. If they start telling their colleagues that they hate the EHR that they were “forced” to implement because of the government carrots and sticks, then it will be quite disappointing.

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February 27, 2012 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Incentive  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  EMR Companies  Healthcare IT  HITECH  Meaningful Use
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Care Innovations Summit Challenge Announcements

Today was the Care Innovations Summit in Washington DC. If you want to read more on what’s been happening at the Care Innovation Summit, you can check out the lengthy #cisummit Twitter hashtag to hear what’s being talked about.

One of the things that seems to be sweeping Washington (I think Gingrich mentioned this in one of the GOP debates recently) is the idea of challenges. I like the idea of challenges and encouraging people to strive to do something interesting and useful and rewarding them for it. I don’t know why, but for competitive people like me, the idea of a challenge gets the juices flowing.

In the morning Ignite section of the Care Innovations Summit a number of challenges were presented. Here they are for those who like a good healthcare challenge:
Sanofi Diabetes Challenge

KP HIV Challenge

Janssen at Johnson & Johnson Connected Care Challenge

Allscripts Million Hearts Challenge

Pfizer + Janssen Alzheimer’s Challenge

HHS ONC Care Transitions Challenge

What do you think of these healthcare challenges? I think it’s great that you can earn some reward while doing something beneficial for healthcare.

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January 26, 2012 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare IT Conferences
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Video of Meaningful Yoose Rap at ONC Meeting

Word’s gotten out that the ONC meeting really got down to business and did a bunch of great work today. See this video of Aneesh Chopra and Farzad Mostashari getting down to what looks like maybe the ONC staff doing Ross Martin’s Meaningful Yoose rap.

Note: I tried to embed the video, but that doesn’t seem to be working. So, here’s a link to the video.

All kidding aside, I think it’s great that they did this at the ONC Meeting. Sometimes the people at ONC have to take things far too seriously. It’s like they’re not even human. Here’s a link to see the original Meaningful Yoose rap by Ross Martin.

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November 17, 2011 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: Healthcare IT  Healthcare Social Media  HITECH  Meaningful Use
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New ONC Health IT Website Design

I don’t know how many of you noticed, but ONC has done a nice redesign of the HealthIT.gov website. Here’s a screenshot for those that don’t want to click through to the site:

Besides the website being a pretty big visual upgrade to the site, I also like the way it’s been simplified and focuses on the two most important parts of the healthcare system: the providers and the patients.

I haven’t dug into all the resources really deeply yet, but at first glance it seems like they have some decent information for those who likely don’t have a deep understanding of healthcare IT and the government EHR incentive money.

Personally I’d have liked to see a little more emphasis on EHR selection as opposed to them skipping straight to the EHR implementation. Sure, many people consider EHR selection part of the EHR implementation, but I see EHR selection as so important that it’s worthy of highlighting separately.

I’ll leave an analysis of the section on Patients and Families to the ePatients out there. I’m sure they’ll be chiming in shortly.

I also love all the social media integration that’s happening on the site. My only problem with government use of social media is that they can’t use it properly most of the time. They’re so restricted on what they can and can’t say that you don’t get the full benefits of social media.

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September 8, 2011 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  EMR Implementation  Healthcare IT  Healthcare Social Media
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Innovation Exchanges for Healthcare Stakeholders and IT Folks

Health IT is revolutionizing healthcare in front of our eyes. Every other day, you hear about yet another device or app that measures various aspects of your health, reports findings to doctors. Some of the biggest names in the business world have entered the healthcare market or at least experimented with it (sorry, Google Health, better luck next time). Between HITECH, HIPAA and the monetary implications of the Affordable Care Act, there’s a governmental push for HIT as well, which in some ways bestows an immediacy (and dollars) to health IT.

To regular IT people, health IT looks like a great industry to be in. Healthcare is generally considered recession proof, there’s ample opportunity for innovation, and there’s a certain democratization in how health is managed – an iPhone app can do what your optometrist did, and while you’re never going to be able to write yourself a prescription for sunglasses, there’s a lot more you can know about your health compared to 10 years ago.

And yet, here’s the secret. Not many IT folks know how to make the jump to health IT. I get this question all the time – how do *I* make the switch to healthcare IT? To me at least, it looked as if the best thing would be to network with healthcare industry people, and figure out a way to segue inwards. Clearly there’s a shortfall of health IT professionals (and the paradoxical personal experiences that the newly minted health IT certified folks face – not being trained on vendor specific software is making it difficult to get jobs, but that’s another topic for another day.)

That’s why I’m particularly enthused by what’s coming from the Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). ONC is spearheading Innovation Exchanges as part of the White House Startup America initiatives. The idea for the exchanges is to bring together healthcare stakeholders with developers and others from the IT world, so they can work together from early stage idea innovation right through to the concrete realization of these ideas.

If you’re someone with a good health IT idea in proof-of-concept stages or even someone just breaking into the health IT market, here’s a great chance to test out the waters with healthcare people who are as eager to strike up collaborations with IT folk. Health 2.0 Conferences are scheduled in San Francisco, Indianapolis and the New England area.

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September 6, 2011 I Written By

Priya Ramachandran is a Maryland based freelance writer. In a former life, she wrote software code and managed Sarbanes Oxley related audits for IT departments. She now writes about healthcare, science and technology as well as traditional news features.

Filed Under: EHR  Electronic Health Record  EMR Conferences  EMR Jobs  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare IT Conferences  HIPAA  HITECH
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