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I just finished reading this article from Center for Public Integrity where it talks patient data safety rules being disregarded and unenforced.

The prospect of data breaches is not merely a theoretical concern. In 2009, hospitals and insurance companies were plagued by high-profile losses of sensitive patient data. In November, the insurer Health Net announced that a portable hard drive containing medical claims of as many as 1.5 million members in Arizona, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York had been lost or stolen. In October, a laptop containing social security numbers and other personal information of patients at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was stolen from a car parked at a hospital employee’s home.

As someone who works a lot of personal data, patient data is definitely one of my major concern.  However, as mentioned in the article, punishment for this lack of attention to patient data is currently not enforced.  As a result, we have incidents in which portables hard drives containing patient data is stolen.  (Personally I don’t think patient data should be allowed to be stored in a portable hard drive in the first place.)   As EHR adoption gets more prevalent, patient data will be easier to access as they are in an electronic form.  Yet, this will definitely bring data security issue into the front light.

Surrex is another consulting firm that is jumping into the healthcare IT bandwagon as they launches healthcare IT and EHR division.

“We have seen studies that predict talent shortages in the Healthcare IT market that approach 30% over the next 5 years,” says Surrex EHR Strategist Michael Junge. “If the effort to improve healthcare in the United States is to succeed it is imperative that individuals and companies with the experience and capacity to deliver positive results step up and focus their skills on serving this vital marketplace. We have to find ways to effectively leverage our existing talent and resources to ensure the success of healthcare IT initiatives.”

They will be competing in a field currently dominated by Perot (acquired by Dell) and Accenture.

It looks like we are starting to get more information on how physicians and hospitals can get the EMR incentive reimbursement for adopting EMR system that was passed as part of the federal stimulus plan ($14.1 billion to $27.3 billion in net Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments).

The federal government has issued two sets of regulations that are designed to lay the groundwork for physicians and hospitals to receive payments for implementing and utilizing electronic medical records.

A proposed rule issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services outlines provisions governing EMR incentives and details what constitutes meaningful use of the technology — a prerequisite for receiving any bonus dollars. A separate, interim final regulation issued by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology sets initial standards and certification criteria for the use of approved EMRs.

Hopefully this will bring more clarity to the overall EMR market and start a consolidation between the different vendors.  Follow the link to take a look to get a chart containing the first 25 objectives to meet meaningful use.

Practice Fusion is one of the free EHR systems that is currently running in a cloud environment. The company is based in San Francisco and it has been well received considering the price tag of free.

The company just announced that they will start offering free e-Prescribing, one of the most talked about aspect of EHR systems.

Practice Fusion’s free e-prescribing system includes:

* Connection to over 50,000 pharmacies
* Continuously updated medication library
* Same-day enrollment for most providers
* Flexibility to use e-prescribing as a stand-alone feature or as part of the comprehensive free EHR system
* Easy pharmacy look-up with filters for proximity to the practice or patient address
* Refill requests delivered back to the practice directly from the pharmacy
* Instant prescription details delivered to the patient Personal Health Record online
* Unlimited free set-up assistance, migration help, training and support
* Qualification for the Medicare e-prescribe bonus

This is a very positive sign and it will help them with their EHR adoption.

iPhone has become a necessity for more and more people and it is starting to find its way in the field of EHR.  Epic recently announced they have released an app called Haiku.

“Haiku provides authorized clinical users of Epic’s Electronic Health Record with secure access to clinic schedules, hospital patient lists, health summaries, test results and notes. Haiku also supports dictation and In Basket access. Haiku works on both the iPhone and iPod touch,” according to the app’s description on the AppStore.”

The partnership between Epic and Apple is an interesting one.  With the technical background provided by Apple, there will be more and more EHR companies jumping onto the smart phone bandwagon.  EHR apps for Android anyone?

One of the key component hailed by different EHR vendors and supporters is e-prescribing module.  (I would say the other one is surgical scheduling).  E-prescribing is seen as a better way in which physician can prescribe and track the different types of drug a patient is currently taking or schedule to take.  However, implementing an e-prescribing module is not easy.  The basic tracking of medication order, medication dispense and medication administration requires careful schema design and flexibility.

According to a survey by European Commission:

The European Commission investigated the qualitative socio-economic impact of interoperable EHR and e-prescribing systems in 11 practice cases in Europe, the U.S. and Israel to provide insight into factors surrounding successful EHR and e-prescribing deployment. Nine of the cases also underwent a quantitative evaluation of their socio-economic impacts.

“Decisions to invest in EHR and e-prescribing systems should [involve the adoption of] strategies that fit their local or regional setting and be designed to succeed by meeting clearly identified, measurable needs,” concluded the Commission.

If EHR system is going to be a success, e-prescribe module will be one of the key component that will have to be shine and provide substantial benefits.

Two of most successful EHR programs (Department of Veteran Affairs and Kaiser Permanente) has come together to form a partnership.

The VA is the largest integrated health system in the country and a longtime leader in health information technology. The VA’s partnership with Kaiser could pave the way for other public-private health record sharing programs, officials of both organizations said…

The VA-Kaiser initiative will be launched in San Diego, providing a “gateway” for clinicians from the VA and Kaiser to share patient health information including condition, medications, and allergies, among other data. Patients must authorize sharing of their information between physicians.

Sharing data between two disparate system is a non-trivial task.  A lot of engineering efforts and time will be required in order for this to happen.  However, without data sharing, the data stored in individual silo will be useless if a patient moves around the country.  This is definitely a step in the right direction for EHR by the of the leaders in its industry.