Stay up-to-date via RSS!

As a resident of California, it has been painful for me to see how much the state has struggled.  Balloon deficits caused by unnecessary programs have put California in a very bad state.  As I read the article regarding California Health Provider tackes EHR, I hope they can do a better job to prevent the ballooning of health care cost.

Community Memorial Health System is a not-for-profit with two hospitals and nine family health centers in Ventura County, an affluent coastal area of California adjacent to Los Angeles. Community Memorial was established in 2005 by the merger of the 240-bed Community Memorial Hospital and 103-bed Ojai Valley Community Hospital.

Saw this on DotMedNews:
President Obama announced more than $500 million in stimulus money to support construction and renovation of 85 community health centers nationwide and to encourage adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHR) and Health Information Technology. It’s part of $2 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds earmarked for health centers.

The President also announced a new demonstration initiative to support the delivery of advanced primary care to Medicare beneficiaries through community health centers (CHCs).

Looks like the money is starting to be released from the government to different areas of health care after much talk through out the year.  The impact of the stimulus money is currently unknown as the cost of implementing EHR is much higher than what the stimulus money will compensate.  Base on past performance, there are numerous of bad EHR implementation examples.  At this point it will be interesting to see how many Health Center bite the bullet as a result of the stimulus money.

A very nice short video regarding the implementation of EHR at Cleveland from the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. Cleveland clinic has put more than 10 million dollars investing in their EHR system. However, it doesn’t guarantee health care savings. In fact, they are not sure whether it even improves quality. Definitely kicks off an interesting discussion.

I just saw this article from the Health Care Blog regarding a year in review for EHR.  It is very well written and is definitely worth a read.

The key points included:

• Payment for Meaningful Use of EHR technology, not for the software and hardware itself.
• It’s become PC to ask tough questions about EHRs, quality, and health care costs
• CCHIT’s loss of invulnerability and the displacement of its monopoly on EHR certification
• The Power Shift Away from Legacy HIT Firms
• Interest in HIT by Big Technology Companies

Personally I am most surprised by CCHIT”s loss of monopoly on the EHR certification. It would have been a very profitable business for which they had a firm grip on it. 2010 should be interesting as stimulus money starts to kick in.

One of the true benefit of EHR system is the ability to monitor drugs and the impact of specific drugs on patients.   Since the data are stored in the database, they allow easy access and research.  The research will lead to better patient care and drug safety.  As the country currently lacks a aggregated database for such purpose, there are actions moving toward making this a reality.

As policy makers in Washington push for various forms of evidence gathering to determine the safety and effectiveness of medical treatments, the study proposes a broad model for monitoring drug safety that would consist of detailed publicly available data that independent researchers could freely analyze.

Such a database could be continually updated and aggregated with new information, as the results of new studies were published, to calculate a near real-time balance sheet of a drug’s risks and benefits.

A public database continually updated and aggregated with information will allow researchers to determine whether some of the drugs have the desired affect/or no affect on a specific cohort.  Eventually this can lead to better individual treatment.